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Escape from Your E-Mail – An AwayFind Review

E-mail sucks.

Those two words probably conjure up memories of when you come home from a vacation or a long weekend away from work on Monday morning only to see something like this:

Your mailbox has 2,424 messages in it…
 - 1,216 are actually spam
 - 764 are you being cc’d because people needed to do a CYA with you
 - 236 are jokes or photos that are annoying and that you never read
 - 152 are newletters from trade publications that you will eventually get to
 - 56 ARE THE EMAILS YOU REALLY NEEDED TO READ WHILE YOU WERE AWAY

You then proceed to go through everything with a trigger finger on the delete button. But you start to wonder…”What if those 56 emails could have gotten to me in a timely manner?”.

Enter AwayFind.

You might have read the book, The Four-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. The premise it to outsource the things that others could do for you cheaper, thus maximizing the value of your time and letting you live life now. AwayFind aims to cut down your time in checking e-mails and the amount of e-mails flowing to your inbox. The goal is to get you to deal with e-mails twice a day.

This might seem impossible at first, and you know that people will get an immediate “Out of Office” auto-reply message allowing you to get to most things later. However, when a message is of utmost importance, people can click on the AwayFind link (www.awayfind.com/username) that directs them to a Web form, which can send you an e-mail or SMS alert. The service is currently offered in Free or Premium plans. (SEE BELOW FOR MORE DETAILS)

You can, of course, edit this message to include other details like when you plan on checking email, whether you’re on vacation, or the phone number to someone else who’s available to help.

The only downside right now is that it lacks integration with email itself. This unfortunately makes people with urgent matters repeat their email. I know this is something that Jared Goralnick, creator of AwayFind and President of SET Consulting, are working on for a future release. 

Right now, it is in beta it just came out of beta this week and the AwayFind service comes in two variations: a basic, free service and a professional version for $5/month. 4.95 until Friday and then 6.95 thereafter…or 34.95/ year until Friday or 49.95 thereafter. Most people will need the professional version, but the free service only offers 5 text messages per month offers unlimited SMS. So sign up today and give it a try.�

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