A Means to Someone Else’s End

Being a means to someone else’s end. This is an issue that I have faced and one that often comes up when I talk to entrepreneurs who are looking for advice. Now to a certain degree, most things in business are simply a means to an end. For example, on a basic level, when an investor invests in a company, that company is a means to the end of making money for the investor. In that case though, the interests are very clear and hopefully on the same path between the entrepreneur and the investor.

What I think is problematic for many entrepreneurs is when they face a 3rd party who has interests that only align partially. For example, you are the CEO of Startup Company XYZ that designs, manufactures, and sells a special widget. Big Company ABC comes to you with a deal to use your manufacturing facilities to design and manufacture a new type of widget which they will sell. A lot of startups get approached by big companies who want to “outsource” things to them. Do not do this deal. It’s obviously a great deal for Company ABC to skip the design and manufacturing stages by outsourcing it to you and, but this deal leaves you stretched thin and unfocused. Your Startup Company XYZ needs to stay focused on your widget, not on someone else’s widget.

These people want to bend your will to match theirs. That’s why it’s so important to know what you want and go for it. Otherwise, it’s too easy for others to come in and use you for their own purposes. It’s very rare that the interests of both parties align perfectly. When you are at risk of becoming a means to someone else’s end and that end is not what you ultimately want, run the other way. Fast.

My New E-Mail System

Now that I finally have my own laptop (after going almost 2 months without my own computer), I have had to deal with the typical issues like re-installing old programs and clearing my e-mail Inbox. Although I used a public computer to check through my e-mails, I still had an Inbox with 600 unread e-mails. I typically like to clear my Inbox and I decided that I’d invest the time now to save myself time later.

When going through my unread e-mails, I noticed a few trends and decided to setup filters in Gmail to better process my incoming e-mail. I quickly noticed that all e-mails basically fall into “auto-generated” and “personal” e-mails. Basically, “personal” e-mails are any e-mail where someone has to manually e-mail you and often the e-mail is intended for just you or at most a few other people. “Auto-generated” e-mails come from websites I have accounts on or groups I’ve signed up for. My ultimate goal was to create an Inbox where I would only get personal e-mails. These are usually the e-mails that require my immediate attention as I prefer to reply fairly quickly to e-mails. Here’s what I came up with:

1) Some websites/groups send me a lot of e-mail that I don’t read often

I found that sites like Staples, Amazon, Uloop, Skydeck, Mint, and others send me frequent updates. I very rarely read those, but sometimes I do and I don’t want to delete them all. So I setup Gmail filters to filter them into a separate folder that I can check infrequently. This way I can search through them at any time or retrieve them if needed at a later date.

2) Some websites/groups send me a lot of e-mail that I read consistently

A few sites like Facebook and Twitter, send out many notifications and I usually will read these. I still don’t want them clogging up my Inbox, as these notifications are not always that important. For sites like these, I setup individual folders that get filtered e-mails. For example, Facebook e-mails all go into a Facebook folder, etc. This also includes all of the school e-mails I get from Penn and Wharton. I want to stay informed of on campus events and school news, but I don’t always need to see this right away.

3) Some websites/groups send me e-mail that I never read

This was the easiest to deal with. I have signed up for websites in the past that I no longer use and listservs that I no longer read. For these, I simply setup auto-delete filters so I will never even see their e-mails. This was my favorite part and it will surely clear a lot of “noise” out of my Inbox.

4) Personal e-mails get lost in the shuffle

These are the most important for me.  I noticed more than a few personal e-mails that I had missed or replied slowly too because they were in the middle of a bunch of other e-mails. These e-mails are now the only e-mails that touch my Inbox.

Overall, I spent a few hours setting up all the filters and clearing through my Inbox. In the end I am left with a system that should hold fairly well for the foreseeable future and help me keep my e-mail organized.