Email, productivity and GTD
16 Aug
I've been doing a lot of thinking about productivity, procrastination and organisation in advance of the new school year due to start in a couple of weeks. I wanted to get my tools in place and set up before I begin so that I can hit the ground running.
Whilst I have dabbled a little at the edges of Getting Things Done methodology, I have never committed to it fully (and the jury is still out on that - I'm not sure I have the patience to go through the initial stages) and I wanted to do a little more research on productivity tools.
I've spent the morning syncing my iPhone todo list (I use ToDo) with a new pro online account. Everything is running smoothly and I'm really pleased in particular with the that goes with it.
My next job is to sort out my personal inbox. I am very disciplined about work email and normally achieve inbox zero daily. It feels good and works well for me. However, my personal gmail inbox is an absolute nightmare with 4 different accounts all channelled into one place and no sense of order. There are four thousand odd emails lurking in there that need sorting out in a very big way!
A reminder was called for so I did a little digging around on audio / video materials to support my productivity blitz this morning and found a couple of very handy things.
Firstly, here is back in 2007. It's superb and very simple.
Next up I enjoyed this podcast from Joe and Josh about productivity and GTD on It helped to clarify some key things for me.
Finally I thought I would share a which made me smile and is a great piece on how we need to revisit the purpose of email. There are so many channels of communication, yet email tends to be the default setting for so many people. He says:
Stop. Sending. Email.
Instead of abusing email as a "one size fits all" conduit for communication, be smart. to the right medium for the particular message you're trying to deliver:
- Broad kudos? Post it on a feedback forum or your blog.
- Need an urgent, immediate answer? Pick up the phone and call.
- Got something that needs a lot of touchy feely discussion? Set up a face to face meeting.
- Discussing a particular topic or product? Post it on a public message board.
- Is this more of a friendly, social thing? Try using a social network like Twitter or Facebook.
- Business proposal? Perhaps it would be smart to approach indirectly, through soliciting recommendations of business associates.
The real solution here is to move people beyond email silos wherever and whenever possible. Some amount of email is still inevitable, though. What steps can we take to turn our email from a dangerous variable reinforcement machine to something more … sane? Predictable, even?
- Turn off all notification and interruption features in your email client.
- Only check your email at regular, scheduled intervals.
- Set up your email client to automatically highlight those emails from friends and business associates who are historically known to send you useful email.
Interesting stuff! I will share more as I come across it. In the meantime, I'm going to procrastinate a little before diving into that inbox..... ugh....