A bit of merlin magic, check e-mail only every half hour
So everyone loves, Merlin Mann and his productivity websites / podcasts. However I recently took on board some of his advice. People who know me know what a stubborn old bastard I can be, so to actually take advice and act on it - unheard of.
Yes that's correct folks... my mail is only checked every 30 minutes, and do you know what. It's amazingly liberating. I decided to try it after a recent altercation at work about my habbit of wondering off and not taking my cell with me, my personal phone I might add.
My boss was lecturing me again about how it is important that I am contactable, and if my cell is malfunctioning, the company would supply me with one that I must carry with me at all times. I tried to explain that I don't run ANY safety critical systems, planes don't fall from the sky, cooling rods don't fail to instantiate in my object oriented nuclear reactor.
After some acrid comment about e-mail without QOS is actually a more reliable communications tool for me that a cell I decided to, possible in a fit of pique, make it just slightly more difficult to contact me.
So e-mail is only auto collected every half hour, and do you know what has happened, bog all. No one died. No one even noticed. Except me, I get a clearly defined half hour whereby my computer is controlled by my schedule and not the other way round.
I have a fairly large list of mail rules anyway to sort things on the way in.
Then I have a smart folder of today's unread messages which I must attend to, now every 30 minutes, which takes mere moments then I'm back on task - after a crafty check of the digg homepage.
You see there is almost a rule of diminishing returns when checking e-mail every minute as I used to - you spend time sorting and time slicing in and out of modes and to be honest getting less real work done.
All hail Merlin for he knows the truth.
Yes that's correct folks... my mail is only checked every 30 minutes, and do you know what. It's amazingly liberating. I decided to try it after a recent altercation at work about my habbit of wondering off and not taking my cell with me, my personal phone I might add.
My boss was lecturing me again about how it is important that I am contactable, and if my cell is malfunctioning, the company would supply me with one that I must carry with me at all times. I tried to explain that I don't run ANY safety critical systems, planes don't fall from the sky, cooling rods don't fail to instantiate in my object oriented nuclear reactor.
After some acrid comment about e-mail without QOS is actually a more reliable communications tool for me that a cell I decided to, possible in a fit of pique, make it just slightly more difficult to contact me.
So e-mail is only auto collected every half hour, and do you know what has happened, bog all. No one died. No one even noticed. Except me, I get a clearly defined half hour whereby my computer is controlled by my schedule and not the other way round.
I have a fairly large list of mail rules anyway to sort things on the way in.
Then I have a smart folder of today's unread messages which I must attend to, now every 30 minutes, which takes mere moments then I'm back on task - after a crafty check of the digg homepage.
You see there is almost a rule of diminishing returns when checking e-mail every minute as I used to - you spend time sorting and time slicing in and out of modes and to be honest getting less real work done.
All hail Merlin for he knows the truth.
posted by M at 11:15 PM
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