Views of a Modern World

Everything else Rick writes

Zero-based: use HARO efficiently with filters

July 15, 2009 by rickcolosimo Leave a Comment

Peter Shankman‘s HARO (Help A Reporter Out) service is extremely valuable, but his opportunity-packed three emails a day can be hard to review in a timely fashion and risk getting bypassed if you have a big incoming stream of email. Because the content is time-sensitive, putting them off to read like a newsletter is self-defeating, like when I used to save daily WSJ issues I hadn’t read.

A few months ago, I signed up for HARO. You get three emails a day, each with 25-35 queries from reporters (loosely defined) looking for sources for various pieces. But since I’m primarily interested in a very discrete subset of those issues, namely “autism” or “special education,” reading through the emails was sometimes a hit-or-miss proposition.

Finally, I realized that I was shooting myself in the foot by letting all of the emails rise up to the level of my attention (cf. this video of Clay Shirky re: user filter failures via Lifehacker). Simply put, my new secret is to use an Outlook rule to delete the email from my inbox unless it has “autism” or “special education” in it. That way, if it’s in my inbox, I know it’s high priority and I can give it the appropriate amount of attention rather than subconsciously calculating the likelihood that there was something relevant and the time pressure of a response against my current and imminent workload. That one change, which only took a few minutes to implement was a big timesaver over trying to read three of those emails a day.

You can probably find a set of keywords that work for you, too. A colleague said that she has too many keywords to make this work well, but that’s no reason not to take a short step in the right direction. She could pick her top two or three keywords and let a similar rule or filter treat conforming emails differently, such as changing the subject text to “Urgent – HARO” or moving them to a specified high-priority folder. The key is differentiating more important emails from all the other emails, which she can then treat in her standard email workflow.

Time spent: <15 minutes, total

Time saved: <15 minutes per day

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: email, marketing, productivity, tips, Zero-based

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Search this site

Recent Posts

  • That Stupid FB Notice
  • Memorial Day 2020
  • House Rules
  • Lost Spring
  • Did not find

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Tags

aba Add new tag Army autism biography blogging business model character cool culture customer data dating decisiveness economics fear finance humor language law leadership marketing military networking objective orphan Orphan ideas orphans personal politics privacy productivity quote quotes rant relationships right view soapbox software bounty tips tools wisdom workflow writing Zero-based

Copyright © 2021 · Diligent on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.