The Tyranny of Email

On 19 Oct, 2004, at 13:14, Nik wrote:

> <http://www.w-uh.com/articles/030308-tyranny_of_email.html>
>
> Saw this article (linked off of BoingBoing.net) and figured it might
> be of interest to the list. Basically, it's a discussion of why email
> limits productivity (because it's distracting!) and how to set up your
> day to avoid having that distraction. (Short answer: Quit your email
> program.)

I would love to "Photo-Scan my email to my visual cortex" and get back
to it when the powerful unconscious brain has digested it: so that the
much smaller parallel processing ability of the conscious mind can deal
with it effectively. This is often mistakenly known as some kind of
speed reading.

Sure, it's possible:- All new mail comes to 'IN' -- you select it and
'Save as...' to your Speedy PhotoScan --> Visual Cortex folder. Open
in a handy editor and zip... it's DONE!

Then, set the rules to work on the In box and read when your mind
signals you that it is ready to ignore all the stuff that is exciting
but that can wait... and you go to work.

Replying to draft as a default would save the whole world an immense
amount of mail, too. I won't elaborate, it might lead to a magnum opus
that you would all hold me to for the rest of my life.

Some emailers might make this kind of process really well automated?
Although many would scream that 'mail has to go out NOW' wouldn't it
be better to send out a coherent and useful reply just a little later?
Especially those replies that didn't have to go out at all.

Of course, if the world is certaily going to come to an end without
your reply: do reply and help it come to an end eventually, anyway.

George

--On Tuesday, October 19, 2004 1:14 PM -0700 Nik <GerberiNik.net> wrote:

> <http://www.w-uh.com/articles/030308-tyranny_of_email.html>
>
> Saw this article (linked off of BoingBoing.net) and figured it might be
> of interest to the list. Basically, it's a discussion of why email limits
> productivity (because it's distracting!) and how to set up your day to
> avoid having that distraction. (Short answer: Quit your email program.)

Depends on your definition of productivity. Since I'm in tech support if I
shut down my e-mail my productivity goes to zero.

However there are times when I'm working on a longer term project when
shutting down e-mail is very helpful. Then the phone starts ringing....
But I think this is why they invented server rooms, so I kill all my remote
terminals and walk down to the server room to enjoying the whine of a 1000
fans (if you thought the "wind-tunnel" Macs were loud you've not heard a
first generation Dell 2650 rack mount server) and a huge air handling unit.

Working from home is nice, just have to put up with the occasional bouts of
cat typing 8-)

Kevin

On 10/19/2004 13:14, "Nik" <GerberiNik.net> wrote:

> Basically, it's a discussion of why email
> limits productivity (because it's distracting!) and how to set up your
> day to avoid having that distraction. (Short answer: Quit your email
> program.)

Unfortunately, one of my email programs (Eudora) is what presents me with
work to do (which does necessarily sometimes interrupt work I would
otherwise have done).

Quitting the other email programs (such as this one) is indeed very
effective.

  --John

On Tuesday, October 19, 2004, at 04:14 PM, Nik wrote:

> <http://www.w-uh.com/articles/030308-tyranny_of_email.html>
>
> Saw this article (linked off of BoingBoing.net) and figured it might
> be of interest to the list. Basically, it's a discussion of why email
> limits productivity (because it's distracting!) and how to set up your
> day to avoid having that distraction. (Short answer: Quit your email
> program.)
>
> The follow-up article (linked at the bottom of the first) is also
> quite interesting.
>
> Given our previous discussion of best uses for presence in instant
> messaging/iChat, it seemed particularly pertinent.
>
> I'm curious what others have to say about it.

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep"

Despite deadlines, obligations, chores, etc., I am out wandering in the
cyber-woods again. At least this excellent article underscores that I'm
not alone in finding it difficult to sit in front of a computer screen
and work for unbroken stretches of time when so many tantalizing
distractions are just keystrokes away. And I don't even do instant
messaging.

For all the promised efficiency and usefulness of personal computers,
e-mail and the internet offers a double dose of opportunities to
procrastinate that were not available in the typewriter era. In part, I
think we have Apple to thank for this - the Mac's elegant gui,
Hypercard, faster and more efficient processors geared toward graphics,
plus multitasking and easy networking, created opportunities for
entertainment, hyperlinked information and quick communications that
previously had only been speculated about in science fiction.

But part of my problem is definitely personal - since I began working
at home, I find myself much less likely than ever before to be included
in the "Seven Habits Of Highly Productive People" book. Even when I
worked in a newsroom for a few years, I was less likely to be
distracted as it was more difficult to think of excuses. There were so
many interruptions I had to tune out, and I had to accomplish certain
things before I could leave, that it kept me focused on priorities and
deadlines.

Marilyn

At 7:03 AM -0700 2004/10/21, John W. Baxter wrote:
>On 10/19/2004 13:14, "Nik" <GerberiNik.net> wrote:
>
>> Basically, it's a discussion of why email
>> limits productivity (because it's distracting!) and how to set up your
>> day to avoid having that distraction. (Short answer: Quit your email
>> program.)
>
>Unfortunately, one of my email programs (Eudora) is what presents me with
>work to do (which does necessarily sometimes interrupt work I would
>otherwise have done)

        As soon as Eudora let me stop bouncing in the Dock, I did it.
I have it chime once for new mail arrivals, but disable this for
certain high-volume low-priority mailboxes (you can override
notifications with filters).

        In Ole's terms, I'm in tech support. Personally, I'd much
rather be interrupted by email than by the phone (desk, cell, or
page). Also, I rarely work in 3-hour chunks, but managing interrupts
is a critical (and difficult) skill. This is largely why I am so
wedded to Eudora. I use an amalgam of filtering, leaving windows open
(window state is in Eudora Settings, and I keep mail on an iPod so I
can bring that state with me), and FKeys to help me (barely/mostly)
balance the priorities/interrupts of email. I've been evolving this
work style since 1989, and am deeply disturbed at the thought of
messing with it in a serious way. Once Eudora has better IMAP
support, though, it will be less of a lock-in, as (after pushing my
Eudora filters up to the server) I'll be able to use alternative
clients without interfering with 'real email' which happens in Eudora.

        After reading the first article, which basically said
everybody needs to work in 3-hour chunks, and the second article,
which said he's only concerned with engineers, I restate the thesis
thus: if you need large chunks of time to work effectively, having
your email client interrupt you is counterproductive. I don't think
anyone will argue with that. The specifics vary in relevance and
usability (email is considered to be real-time in my department, and
as I said above, the alternative would be to spend more time on the
phone, which would be worse for me).

        I definitely got about twice as much work done per hour when
I spent a few days a month HTML coding at home, due to the decreased
distractions (I was still handling email normally), but as a parent
(even when I'm not 'on-duty') this is a somewhat smaller multiplier...

                                                Chris
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

The Tyranny of Email

I have different levels of email alertness, depending how much work I have to do.

0) Normal: Eudora plays an new mail sound, but no dialog box. 1) Focus: Mute all sound so I can't hear the new mail alert, but I can switch to Eudora to see what it going on. 2) Too Much Work....Aaaaaagggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!: Quit Eudora (and Safari). 3) Long stretch of too much work to do: Delete whole threads of TB-T. (Another outliners thread? Well, I ain't gonna read that. Buh-bye. A better way to read man pages? Buh-bye.)

I know that I am easily distracted (witness that fact that I writing this and not working). Quitting them makes it harder to take a 30 second break that turns into a 5 or 10 minute break.

The tyranny of email? At work, email is also a weapon, both offensive
and defensive. So it must be attended to accordingly.

But a really nice feature of Entourage (built in) and Apple Mail
(with the Mail.appetizer plug-in) is the little preview window that
shows the sender and subject. A slight motion in the bottom corner of
the screen, a glance to note sender&subject followed by a
lightning-quick decision of whether to read the whole thing or not
(mostly not) and one can get long stretches of uninterrupted work
done.

At 2:47 PM -0700 10/25/04, Marilyn Matty wrote:
>But part of my problem is definitely personal - since I began
>working at home, I find myself much less likely than ever before to
>be included in the "Seven Habits Of Highly Productive People" book.
>Even when I worked in a newsroom for a few years, I was less likely
>to be distracted as it was more difficult to think of excuses. There
>were so many interruptions I had to tune out, and I had to
>accomplish certain things before I could leave, that it kept me
>focused on priorities and deadlines.

Ironically, my company has just moved its HQ from the old and busted
50 year old building into a new and shiny building. So I lost my
office and have been moved into a hexicle farm. (Hexicles are like
cubicles, but the packing efficiency is higher in the honeycomb
shape, hence the six-sided hexicles. And probably higher rates of flu
in the coming season. But never mind that...)

Now that I'm in a hexicle I feel I'll be caught when I take those
temporary escapes to websites that aren't directly related to work.
So despite moving into a more cramped and exposed space, I'm getting
more work done. (Though that isn't attributable to more or less
email.)

I heartily concur with the principles of effective use of email
presented in the article cited by Nik. When I first got an email
account, several years ago, I had my POP client set to check for new
mail every five minutes. Finding that I was being interrupted too
often, I changed that interval to 15 minutes.

Two years ago, after I was (reluctantly) forced to switch from
SWBell's in-house email system to SBC Yahoo, I discovered that the
latter offers anti-spam filtering that's far superior to anything I
could have managed otherwise. However, to maximize its effectiveness
one must use the Web interface before downloading from the POP server.

Now I operate with automatic checking of the POP server disabled.
 From two to a dozen times a day, I'll use OmniWeb on my OS X system
to pre-screen incoming messages. This includes flagging the few
spams which evade the filters (thus training the filters to improve).
I also process those messages which contain Weblinks that will
display better on this system, and scan the bulk mail folder to
rescue the occasional false positive. As soon as I finish this
process, I'll do a manual download from the POP server to the MacOS
8.1 machine which is my primary email handler and work system. All
replies and forwards are done from here, so that I have a
consolidated archive of all email activity on a single system.

Overall, my productivity is definitely higher with this workflow, for
precisely the reasons stated in the article. It's nice to have my
own decisions validated independently!

Carl