May 25, 2007

Better Living Through Email Managment

According to a recent New York Times article, multitasking doesn't actually increase productivity but hinders it, because disruptions and interruptions impair our ability to process information. I didn't need to read the article to know this. The proof is in my typical workday, with it continuous starts and stops, a seemingly endless stream of interrupted interruptions. By day's end, I'm often exhausted and stressed, not so much from the work but the form of the work, the herky-jerky to-ing and fro-ing. It makes my head hurt, it makes me crazy, and it rarely leaves me feeling I've accomplished anything.

The core problem is email. I receive a ton of it; more all the time. If email is the killer app, I sometimes feel like one of its victims. At the same time, it's almost impossible to imagine work these days without it. And certainly my own work, with its far-flung clients and colleagues, couldn't exist without email. What to do?

Managing the Technology

I've never been one for productivity how-to's (books, websites, seminars, and the like), believing such things a likely waste of time, the rain dance of the unproductive. But there was a line in the New York Times piece that got me thinking: "The answer appears to lie in managing the technology, instead of merely yielding to its incessant tug."

The next day, I set up a system of checking email at two-hour intervals. These "email windows," as I think of them, usually last about a half hour. Then I close my email program (Apple Mail), or in some cases leave it open and work offline. Goodbye incessant little ding.

Thanks to iCal, I was able to automate the process of periodically re-opening Mail. This was key. Without automation, I would have quickly slipped back to my previous system, such as it was, which was to leave Mail open all day and read messages as they arrived. I wasn't in the habit of answering each message immediately; most would go to my "respond" folder. But as the number of emails in that folder grew, I would feel increasingly distracted and even a bit distraught, which naturally affected my ability to focus on the task at hand. This was bad, obviously, but it was especially bad when the task required sustained concentration—like, say, when building a website.

My business is building websites.

More Productive, Less Crazy

In the two months of using this system, I believe I've become more productive. Certainly I've become less crazy. Less crazy is good.

The one downside is that I'm periodically "off-grid" to clients and colleagues, which can sometimes delay the completion of a task. Whenever this seems problematic, I leave Mail open. Usually it's not that problematic.

iCal Automation

There are doubtless many methods to automate the process, but if you're a Mac user, iCal offers a simple solution.

1. Create a new event in iCal.
2. Under Repeat, select "custom" and check the five days of the workweek.
3. Under Alarm, select "Open file."
4. A new selector widget will appear under "Open file" that says "iCal." Click that and choose "Mail." (If you don't use Mail, click "other" and navigate to your mail client.)
5. Repeat the process for each scheduled launching of Mail. (I have it set to launch at 9:30, 11:30, 1:30, 3:30, and 5:30.)

Published in Productivity