Simplifying Inboxes 2007: Voice Mail

Posted on June 26, 2007 by
Categories: Productivity,Simplification

Overview – Voice Mail

During my examination of how information comes into my life, I found that there was a much larger amount of potential “in-boxes” than I had thought. My task was to list all of these input spaces and see if the number could be reduced, and then make sure that each of them get processed.

In this post I will tackle my voice mail.

Voicemail:

  • home
  • client
  • cell phone

Since I am a consultant, I have voice mail at my corporate office and my client office. Unlike when I did this review back in 2005, I am only supporting one client, and I haven’t been to my corporate office in months. I asked them to remove my corporate voice mail back in September 2006. So that leaves Home, Client and Cell Phone.

Client

My current full time client has voice mail, and I make it a point to check it periodically by glancing at the phone set. There is a light that shows red when there are messages.. Since I’m at my desk 95% of my time, there are few phone calls I don’t catch. However, if I am in the middle of something, I am more than willing to let phone calls go to voice mail. I check the incoming number, and if it is not from the few numbers I will always answer, or from within the company, off it goes to be dealt with later.

Cell Phone

My cell phone has voice mail, but few people call me on it. I have made it very clear to everyone — work, friends, family — that my cell phone is for emergencies only. My cell phone is set so that only calls from my family ring through during the day, and it will beep if someone else tries to call. So I take care of voice mail there once a night.

Home

Home voice mail is easy to keep up with, since I see the machine as soon as I get in the house. Those get dealt with, written down, and put into my in-box immediately for processing.

Summary

I think I am very much at a minimum level of voice mail boxes. It might be more of a problem if I had a higher volume of messages, but I only get one message a week on average combined.

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