Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is to check your spam folder. Even the best
Speaker 1: email programs sometimes send messages to the wrong place. By
Speaker 1: checking once a week or so, you just might find
Speaker 1: something interesting. So, like many people, I process my main
Speaker 1: inbox to current every few days or so. But a
Speaker 1: few months ago I remember feeling like it was strange
Speaker 1: that I hadn't heard from someone. This person had seemed
Speaker 1: quite adamant in an earlier conversation that they would be
Speaker 1: reaching out about something soon. So on a hunch, I
Speaker 1: checked my spam mailbox and sure enough, the message was there.
Speaker 1: It was several days old at that point, but it
Speaker 1: was there, and it was better to have read it
Speaker 1: than not read it. And while I was there, I
Speaker 1: also found a nice message from someone who had read
Speaker 1: my books. I definitely wanted to respond to that one. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I wanted to print that particular message out. It wasn't
Speaker 1: spam at all. I was a little miffed that my
Speaker 1: email program thought it was. Now. Of course, those two
Speaker 1: worth while messages were located in the middle of about
Speaker 1: one hundred other messages that were pure garbage, I mean
Speaker 1: Nigerian Prince level scam stuff. But it didn't take very
Speaker 1: long to scroll through the one hundred garbage messages. I
Speaker 1: was glad I checked, and maybe you will be too.
Speaker 1: So today's episode is just a reminder that your primary
Speaker 1: inbox may not be the sum total of all the
Speaker 1: messages you are receiving. Most email pros try to sort
Speaker 1: what is useful from what is not, and often they
Speaker 1: do a really good job, but on occasion they don't.
Speaker 1: You probably don't want to check your spam folder too closely,
Speaker 1: as that is largely going to be a waste of time.
Speaker 1: Checking once a week, on the other hand, means that
Speaker 1: you can find anything that you truly do want to
Speaker 1: see and you will still be responding in a reasonably
Speaker 1: timely manner. So that is what I aim to do
Speaker 1: on Fridays. If I am triaging my inbox from the
Speaker 1: week and seeing what I still need to follow up on,
Speaker 1: I take a quick glance at my spam folder in
Speaker 1: the past week. I found some music from one of
Speaker 1: my kids teachers. I guess the filter didn't like the attachment,
Speaker 1: and a message from the school. It just took a
Speaker 1: few minutes to look, and it turned out that those
Speaker 1: were minutes well spent. Have you ever found anything important
Speaker 1: in your spam folder? I'd love to hear about any
Speaker 1: near misses. You can reach me at Laura at Laura
Speaker 1: vandercam dot com. If the message does go to spam,
Speaker 1: don't worry, I will see it within the week. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's
Speaker 1: to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
Speaker 1: you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.