Focus for People Who Move Fast
~10 min.
To be structured in your thinking, it helps to create habits, mental space, and even physical space that keeps clutter and distractions at bay. Megan Boone, Director of Demand Generation at Thoughtspot, does just that in order to stay focused on building successful campaigns and managing a growing team.
As a marketing leader, Megan gets a ton of inbound email, much of it from sellers looking to get a piece of her valuable attention - or budget.
A cluttered inbox kept her from seeing any cold outreach that might have actually provided value. And unwanted messages were a constant distraction from important work.
“With the volume of email I receive and the poor quality of those messages… My goodness, it’s hard to sift through the noise and figure out what’s important.”
The pain of digital communication overload feels especially sharp for Megan, who knows she’s more productive when her mind - and home office - are clear and clean.
“For me what can be challenging is clutter. There’s digital clutter and physical clutter. I can’t work in a cluttered environment. In the morning, if things are messy, I will clean everything throughout the house. If on a Sunday night, if I don’t clean out the junk and write out a to-do list of big things to focus on… I’ll be under a dark cloud all week and not get things done.”
Though she insists she’s still a work-in-progress, Megan is admirably rigorous about creating good habits for herself and saving time by cutting out things that are less important.
“I think about how we can outsource and find ways to buy back more time, more attention. Our brains can only handle so many decisions, and that’s why Mark Zuckerberg famously wears the same thing every day. You can apply that thinking to work, home, everything.”
Before getting Gated, Megan’s inbox didn’t reflect the order and focus that she strives for in everyday life. Why? She didn’t have any extra time in her day to spend responding to sales pitches, deleting irrelevant solicitations, triaging the flood of incoming demands.
Megan needed a fix that was fast and easy. As one of Gated’s earliest users, she found just that.
"I'm now more productive, respond to emails faster, and even have the time to read cold outreach."
As a marketing professional, Megan recognizes that there are often valuable connections to be made from the cold emails that land in her inbox.
Previously, she didn't have the time or mental space to reply to those sales emails, but now they can get through to her.
How does she describe the process for senders to reach her? “It’s like Disneyland’s Fastpass… for email.”
Plus, when senders reach her, they learn a very important detail about Megan that might be used to start an authentic conversation: She absolutely loves animals. “I’d rather be around animals than people,” she admits. Every sender who pays to reach Megan is supporting her chosen nonprofit: The Nature Conservancy.
There are a wealth of technologies that Megan uses to drive growth for Thoughtspot. Gated is the productivity hack she uses to protect her attention, to make more space for this extraordinary marketer to do great things. Plain and simple, she says: ”Gated saved my inbox.”
Published March 2022
Updated December 2022
