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to cover and decide on the call?” Something like that.
14. Do you like us to schedule personal items in with your business calendar (i.e., order your mother flowers for Mother’s Day, etc.)? Absolutely.
15. What are “all” the e-mail addresses we respond to for you? See earlier text.
16. Do you like us to respond as “you” or something like “client support for Timothy Ferriss.”
The latter, probably something like “Executive Assistant to Tim Ferriss” below your name—I’m open to suggestions.
17. How many times a day do you want e-mail checked?
Twice should be fine to start. Let’s aim for a minimum of at 11 A.M. and 3 P.M. in your time zone.
18. What are your working hours?
10 A.M.-6 P.M. pst, then often 11 p.m.-2 A.M. pst. [Before you cry, “What happened to the four-hour workweek?!” realize that “work hours” here could be replaced with “active and available-by-phone hours.” I have lots of projects and do not preach idleness. I am VERY active. See the sixth comment on this post on www.fourhourblog.com for more elaboration or reread the “Filling the Void” chapter in this book.]
19. Do you like using IM?Not really, unless it’s a scheduled discussion. Just leave yourself logged in, and I’ll log in if I need something. [I tend to use Skype chat these days, as it’s encrypted and I can avoid a separate IM program.]
20. Do you prefer a phone call or an e-mail to answer a quick question?
PHONE CALL, absolutely. DO NOT e-mail me for anything urgent. I really follow my own advice and don’t check e-mail that often.
21. What is your favorite color?
Green like cedar leaves in July.
22. Call at the end of every day (if) there is something that Tim needs to respond to in his e-mail.
23. E-books: Tell them they can download the e-bookfromwww.powells.com.
24. Label all e-mails from “Expert Click” for Tim. No need to respond or forward.
25. All Linked-In e-mails can be archived or deleted as Tim receives notification of invites as soon as he logs into his Linked-In account.
26. For start-up inquiries in the health and wellness industry (or BrainQUICKEN start-up inquiries) please see the templates in
Gmail titled: Congratulations and General Business Questions—BrainQUICKEN Templates.
27. For language inquiries, please see the templates in Gmail titled: Reader Question on Language Resources—Language Templates.
28. When Tim types “dictate” in the e-mail response, this means that we can say to the recipient: As Tim is traveling at the moment and not able to personally respond to your e-mail, I mentioned your message while on the phone to him, and he asked me to dictate. This makes the process easier as we do not have to change the context of the person responding.
[This is to avoid having an assistant convert my first-person “Please tell him that I …” to third-person “Tim says that he …”—providing shorthand for “cut and paste” saves hours of assistant time.]
29. If someone e-mail blasts a bunch of people and I am one of them, usually safe to ignore or delete. Read them carefully, of course, but if it says for example “a few influential people I know” or something like that then if someone can’t take the time to personalize for me, forget them. If Tim is

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