Steveer Robbins here and welcome to the Get It Done guys quick and dirty tips to work less and do more.

John in Austin, Texas called in a question.

Hello, Steven, this is John in Austin, Texas. I have a question for you.

People leave voicemail all the time with no name, number,

or subject that just says, please call me back. My outgoing messages ask them to leave and name and

number, but they skip the greeting. What do I do? I waste a lot of time on these poorly left messages.

Thanks for a great podcast. I hope to hear about this soon.

The quick and dirty tip is to set a firm boundary.

Communicate it clearly, without blame, and make it clear everyone benefits.

Tell people when it takes effect and then follow it utterly.

Don't you just want to blame people?

Ur, you left a vague, unhelpful message.

Unfortunately, blame rarely works, even if they deserve it.

So let's be enlightened. Most likely, people are as busy as you. They're talking to your voicemail

as if you're there in person and probably don't even realize their message is unhelpful.

So it's up to you to teach them. You've tried an outgoing message and that hasn't worked. So now it's time

to change their behavior by changing yours. You, my friend, need to set boundaries. If you continue

without boundaries, you'll lose time to phone tag. You'll either get less work done or you'll

have to stay later. And if you stay late, you'll miss dinner with your family, or more importantly,

you won't be able to join your Warcraft Guild for tonight's Karazahn raid.

Ha, just kidding.

Family is more important, mostly.

...