Monthly Archive for: ‘February, 2012’
3 folders to manage your email
The Inbox Zero is a fantastic way to manage your email. One way to support the method is to create an simple folder structure that will allow for quick access to relevant type of information. One way to do that is to use create a set of three tags or folders to manage all the email:
- Archive
- Do
- Waiting for
Why would you need just those three folders? These three are enough to support the need to keep a track of open itmes and maining a record of conversations. Let me explain one by one.
Archive
This is fairly self-explanatory. You need Archive folder to store your correspondence, keep a record of discussions held, any agreements made etc.
Depending on the system used to store emails the Archive can a giant single folder were everything gets lumped together. This can be easily applied in places where web-based email is used. Services like Gmail provide great search functionality so maintaining a large and complecated sub-folder structure is not be necessary. If you use other tools like Outlook which are not so good in search you will be better off with small set of folders.
In fact this is how I manage email in my workplace. I have two archive folders for major areas of my work. Each archive contains a limited number of folders. I’m trying to keep this number to a minimum but at the same time don’t let it to constrain my ability to categorise and file messages in a way that allows easy retrieval.
Do
One way to manage to do items that arrive via email is to put them on your task list. This is an approach that I follow. The main reason for it, is that dealing with email is only part of my responsibilities so emails should be kept with other actions.
However my approach may not be most effective in environments with heavy traffic. During the processing phase once you’ve established that there is something to do with them it maybe easier to drop emails into the Do folder. When finished processing, open that folder and start working on one item at the time.
Creating a specific folders for items that require action will provide two benefits. First you have a copy of the original correspondence at hand so it’s easy to know what’s required. Secondly a separate folder allows to split todo items from other types of messages and especially remove them from the inbox leaving a clean slate.
Waiting For
Last important category of emails that you should be kept separate from others are waiting for items. Again you could keep track those on your task list and this is how I do it. If you have to deal with a large number of waiting fors, it may be easier to keep them in separate folder and review it regularly, at minimum once a day. Keeping this folder makes it much simpler to find the open items and follow up with someone.
Setting up your email client with these three folders allows you to better support excecution of inbox zero approach. It reduces the obstacles for accessing email, keep things cleas and nicely separated.
This was a last post in the series covering manging email. If you’re interested in the previous post please check email category on this blog.
Organising tasks into contexts
The initial idea of context was coined it referred to a specific location where a task could be completed or a tool necessary to do it. More popular context were @office, @phone, @computer @home etc
Nowadays the ubiquity of internet access and portability of devices makes location and tool dependency obsolete as we can work almost anywhere with all tools available at hand.
Yet contexts are still useful way of categorizing tasks. What we need to change is the categories of contexts used.
There are two solid ideas on the topic that I would like to share. First one a post by Sven Fechner explores the task classification from the perspective of necessary brain power. So you can setup tasks in to buckets like @braindead or @thinking etc.
The reason it approach comes handy is that you’ve already decided how taxing the activity will be. Now all you need to do is check how you feel and then select the appropriate context to work form.
Second approach from Matthew Cornell, looks at the contexts from a bit different angle . It’s more about creating balance of things that have your attention.
The idea is based on the traditional matrix of urgency vs importance but this time you can start with defining tasks into different classes like dull, boring, fun, long, hard etc. Simply draw simple horizontal and vertical axis and then put selected categories. Now take your task list and see where your tasks fit against selected contexts.
As result you will be able to see what area, context takes the most of your time and attention. Then you can decide whether your happy with it or should you re-balance.
Inbox Zero
Over the last couple weeks I have covered some ground talking about various aspects of email. Check part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.
Too much email is now an old cliche and pretty obvious statement, the key question remain then how can you deal with it.
Different people will approach managing email in different ways however there is one method that it’s simple to apply and very effective. The method is called inbox zero and has been created by Merlin Mann based on the principles of GTD methodology.
Inbox Zero is not a magic wand that waves a way all email troubles although I’m sure many people would like that. If you need that try using DELETE key more often. The approach is about making decisions about the content of messages and clarifying the outcomes by regular review of the inbox. Once processed to zero you create a clean slate for new messages to arrive.
As Inbox Zero process takes a lot from David Allen’s GTD methodology there are five stages of the workflow:
Delete/Archive – you first decision should be to decide whether the message should be deleted or archived. By making it first item you gain a lot momentum and cut out a lot of unwanted stuff.
The alternative is to archive if the message might come handy in a simple and flat folder structure.
Delegate – People have different strengths so rather than spend hours sweating over a task, see if there is someone who can do it better faster etc. Even if you’re not a manager see if one of your colleagues is not better suited for this task. Trade something with them. This way both of you would benefit from working of your strengths.
Respond – some things are not worth tracking. If you can respond in 2-4 minutes, do it immediately and have it done. Keeping track of smaller items will take more time and effort that it’s worth.
Defer – bigger items or those where you need to do some preparation should go in your task list. Email is not the only thing you are responsible for so keeping separate list for email isn’t most effective way for managing todos.
Do – When it comes to task execution never work directly from your inbox. Refer to task list a pick an item from there. Once one item is done, don’t check the email just yet, complete two more and then see if new emails have arrived. Since email is only part of your work it should share the same space with other tasks you have to do. This way you can start making progress on things you’ve decided before and not spending time constantly reviewing new emails as soon as they arrive.
If you want to get into more details of the concept and listen to the author, I’m recommending booking some time to watch this video on YouTube.
Quotes form the 99% Conference
I was catching up on my Read it Later items and came across this post summarizing the key insights and ideas from the 99% Conference. Below are some very interesting quotes from some of the speakers.
Andrew Zuckerman:
What gets projects done for me is not inspiration. It’s curiosity and rigor.
It’s the aptitude for hard work that separates the ones who reach a different level of stardom.
Beth Comstock:
Make heros out of the failures. Pay attention to the learnings.
Johshua Foer
The ‘Ok Plateau’ is the point when we turn on autopilot and stop getting better at a certain thing.
Experts treat what they do like a science
Is email your work?
Very often we find that after a long day we haven’t made that much of a progress and all we can remember is email and the countless number of of the messages we’ve gone through.
On the other hand email provides us with instant gratification of completion. Simply take one message, respond to it and problem solved. If compared to few hours of continuous effort to close out a project not wonder email wins.
When someone takes a day to respond does this annoy you? We came to expect that since email provides instantaneous delivery people will behave in the same way. For many few hour response time is not acceptable. However we tend to forget that email is just one element of work. Unless you work in client service team and receiving requests via email you have plenty of other responsibilities. Managing email is only one of them.
What’s in your job spec?
Lets start at the beginning. When you look at your job description does it say deal with email? Most likely not.
For majority to of people the job spec includes things like reporting, writing, attending meetings and discussions, gathering information, routine tasks etc. Sure some of responsibilities will involve dealing with email but the connection is always indirect. Yet somehow we end up spending majority of our days dealing with email and complaining that we are not doing what we were supposed to to.
How much value?
When email came about initially it was this great tool for instant communication. When letters took days to deliver, email was this tool to deliver messages instantaneously.
Nowadays many people have this expectation that we should respond to email very quickly. Yet they forget about two things. Each of us receives plenty of mail, so when sender thinks he’s creating one to one connection for recipient it’s one of many connections to deal with.
Secondly we have limited number of hours at our disposal hence we need to make very smart choices and allocate time where we receive the most value in return.
Better choices
Since we can spend our working day on countless activities each similarly important we should consider following question: does responding to email is more important than working on a project Y or task Z? Unless you work in a call center and dealing with email and your primary responsibility it’s more than likely that you can wait few hours before responding.
Question
Before your start a new day and dive into unread messages consider what bring more value.
Can emails from yesterday evening wait until lunch time so that you can spend some time on this important project?