From the course: Time Management Tips

Set voicemail expectations

From the course: Time Management Tips

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Set voicemail expectations

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- If I call your voicemail, what will I hear? Most people have a voicemail message like this. "Hi, you've reached the voicemail of Dave. "Leave a message and I'll get back to you "as soon as possible." What does as soon as possible mean? Well, whatever it means to the person who's leaving the message. Most people have some variation of an expectation for now. If you don't respond to that voicemail in the next five minutes, they send you an email. And if you don't respond to that email, they send you a text message, and on, and on, which creates a lot of switches of attention in your day. We want to transition out of the culture of now to the culture of when. The culture of when establishes an expectation in the other person's mind that is reasonable. How do we do that with voicemail? First, consider how often you should check your voicemail for work. What is reasonable? Once per day? Twice per day? Every hour on the hour? Create a schedule in your calendar that you know you can stick with. Then create a corresponding voicemail message. Let's imagine that I'm going to check my voicemail three times per day, at the beginning, at noon, and at the end of the day at four. I would then create a voicemail expectation that says something like this. "Hi, you've reached the voicemail of Dave Crenshaw. "I check my messages at noon and at 4:00 p.m. "If you call me after 4:30, "I'll return your call the next day." By establishing clear expectations, you can help both yourself and others move from the stressful culture of now to the productive culture of when.

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