Category: post

Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow, wrote a great article for Internet Evolution recently – The Pleasures of Uninterrupted Communication – detailing his strategy for dealing with interruptions and not having to deal with the mountain of e-mail one encounters after having returned from and extended break or vacation – “email apnea” as it has been coined.

So I eliminate the mountain: when I go away for an email fast (usually coinciding with a holiday), I set up an auto-responder advising correspondents that I’m away and that I “won’t be reading their email” when I get back, asking that they re-send anything urgent after my return (I make sure a few key people, like my business-partners, parents, and agent know how to reach me by phone). When I sit down at my desk again after the break, I download all my mail while I have a little walk or tidy up my desk. Once it’s all downloaded, I select every last message and delete them. No email apnea.

Cory does not delete the e-mails because he does not care about the people who sent them, he does so because he cares too much to not be able to respond due to the sheer volume.

You see, I love communicating too much to be interrupted. Whether I’m writing an essay or a novel, composing an email, or chattering with someone by voice, the last thing I want is to be given a jolt of useless adrenaline every time something new lands in my queue. Indeed, the oppressive weight of the knowledge that the queue is lengthening is enough to stress me out — any time I go away for a day or a week, all I can think of is that mountain of mail accumulating on my server.

One of the many things I love about this is that it is yet another wonderful example of managing others expectations, through simple and compassionate communication, in order to achieve your own freedom. Compassionate? Well, you see, if you let people know what to expect from you – that you only check your e-mail twice a day and at particular times, for instance – then they will not be disappointed that you did not respond to their e-mail as soon as they sent it.

For those of us old enough to remember, there was once a time when this kind of access and availability did not exist. Leaving a phone message is a good example. Once upon a time if you called someone, and they were either not home or on the phone, your only option was to call them back later. The responsibility was placed upon you to remember to take action at a later time, not upon the person you were trying to reach.

Now, all of this has changed around. Now, because there are so many ways for people to place the responsibility of follow-up upon us, even while we are “not available”, it adds up to increased workload and stress placed upon us. I think one of the many dangers of our growing “always connected” society is the idea that license is given to others to always have a way to interrupt others at anytime. The expectation has already been set by the sheer existence of tools that provide ever increasing ways to get our attention. People naturally assume that everyone treats these tools as they do. If they prefer (or are conditioned to) jumping on their email, mobile phone, “crackberry” every time it buzzes or blinks, then they, somewhat naturally, assume the same of you. The onus is therefore upon each us to manage those expectations to fit our needs.

Here is an idea, how about sending an e-mail to your coworkers that goes something like this?

Dear Comrades,
Because I value my communication with you and would like to make sure that I respond to your needs with the appropriate level of action, I have set up some basic criteria for handling my e-mail and mobile phone.
I check and respond to e-mail twice a day. Once in the morning at 9am and again in the afternoon at 4pm. I do this in order to give my responses complete attention at those times. Because of this, I would prefer all non-urgent communication to be e-mailed to me and it will be acted upon at those times.
If there is something that requires my immediate attention, please call me on my mobile phone at 555.555.5555. I assume that anything coming to me via phone is urgent and requires my immediate attention. Therefore, as a courtesy to those that truly require urgency, please do not call my mobile for non-urgent items.
To recap:
Urgent = Phone
Non-Urgent = E-mail
Thank you for your cooperation in helping me provide you with the service you desire.
Sincerely,
Patrick

As I have said before, Be Pavlov, not the dog…

Here are more random whisperings I picked up in overheard conversations in the crowded and overpriced pick-up bar that is called, The Internet:
There are some new and updated GTD Apps that may be of interest to you.
First off, if you live in GMail and have yet to give GTDInbox a try, now may be a good time. This Firefox extension converts GMail into a “productivity and personal management powerhouse”. It has recently been updated to version 2 and contains a bunch of new features.
If GMail is not your thing, maybe you want to give GTDAgenda a try. It is a new GTD based web application that is aiming to be the solution to all of your GTD needs. It contains it has all the tools required for getting your Org-fu on, like goals, projects and tasks, contexts, next actions, checklists, schedules and calendar.
Then again, maybe you have a Mac running Leopard (Mac OS 10.5). Well then, Dennis Best says that you really don’t need a specific GTD application – you have all of the tools you need right there in Leopard. He makes a pretty convincing argument for using iCal, Mail.app, smart folders in the Finder, and many other default tools to string together a pretty workable system.

In a post last week, I discussed my strategy for using a Today Card. That is, an index card with three tasks that I would like to accomplish with some room left for additional tasks, notes, and scratchpad items that come my way. One of the things that I find fascinating about blogging is that, sometimes, the real interesting things said are in the comments, not in the original post itself. That was very true in this instance and it spurred a new iation of this idea that I am experimenting with. It was mentioned by Damon in the comments and I am calling it the Today Page (I have a picture of it posted here).
Instead of an index card, I use one of my Cornell Ruled Circa pages. Title and date go at the top, then I divide it thusly:
* Action – These are the same three items as on the index card before. Three things I would like to try to accomplish that day.
* Agenda – I write down any and all calendar items that I may have going on that day. Even though they are on the calendar, I use a web based calendar and that tab is not always front and center in my browser. Writing them here helps to keep them front and center so I am mindful of them.
* Notes – This are is for anything I need to jot down for the day. It ends up being both scratchpad and short form journal of the day.
So far, this is working out very well. Some of the advantages are that, due to the left hand whitespace, I have an area for metadata. Also, by collecting everything together on one page, at the end of the day I have a pretty good top level view of the course of my day and how the time was spent. While not as small and portable as an index card, I have my Circa on my desk anyway so why not use it and ditch the card?
I would love to hear your thoughts on this, if you have tried anything similar, and how it has worked for you. Special thanks once again to Damon for spurring the idea.

Ben Willis recently wrote a short, but thought provoking, post about how the power of our connected world makes meeting, connecting with and reaching out to new people – complete strangers – very simple. He believes that while it certainly does not trump the quality of a face-to-face communication, the power of the ease and simplicity of it can certainly be powerful…

Three times in the past two days, I’ve made new connections with people (One through Twitter, another through this blog, and another through e-mail) who I would consider highly respectable, and would have likely never had contact with otherwise. Are they high quality interactions? Not necessarily, but they were simple and as powerful as they needed to be.”
I think that there is something to this. What struck me is the fact that several of my online acquaintances have quickly grown into real friendships and professional relationships largely because of the ability to communicate quickly and regularly via the electronic medium.
I will also mention that Princess Bethany is a member of an online forum for women and that has resulted in several close friendships for the both of us. Members of this forum who are also local have become some of our closest friends as a couple.
As with any relationship, it is all about the time and attention you are willing to put into it. I would also say that the sheer amount of communication and interaction methods available to us all in this day and age makes it all the easier for those with a desire to foster and grow these otherwise casual interactions. When we approach a request to “friend me” as more than a desire to expand some popularity credits, but a real desire to interact, we open the potential to make new, honest, fruit bearing connections.
Link: The Remarkable Simplicity of Online Connectedness

Since it is the weekend, I thought I would take a little to to point out some of the places that my little blog has been popping up:
* This site, patrickrhone.com, was featured in the February 2008 issue of the UK magazine .Net ( branded as Practical Web Design on this side of the pond). That’s right. An actual dead tree publication. The particular article we are featured in is a focus on minimalist web design and, if you could not tell, it don’t get much more minimalist than this. I can’t begin to tell you how honored we are by this. Totally stoked is more like it. If you are wondering why I keep saying “we”, my web design partner, Michael Armstrong, gets credit for doing most of the “heavy lifting” around here web wise. I mainly point to where I would like him to put the boxes down.
* Speaking of Michael, he has recently started a fantastic photoblog featuring pictures he has taken in and around the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul – MyTwinCities.net. Some beautiful photos there. Show him some love.
* This site was also mentioned among the Top 100 Productivity and Lifehack Blogs by CollegeDegree.com. I’m at #22 under the Life Organizers section. Very cool.
* Remember, not all of the action pertaining me is happening here. For other topics of interest, make sure to check out The Random Post. There I cover, link to, quote and prognosticate on a iety of topics that just don’t seem to fit here but otherwise may be compelling. For instance, have you heard of Muxtape yet? No? Well, I did a little write-up on it over at The Random Post.
Also remember that I can be found all over the internet. I am very active on Twitter. I ghost write a blog for my new baby daughter, Beatrix. Of course, there are my photos on Flickr and well as my FriendFeed. I am easy to find.

Another round of the ious items that have caught my eye while traversing the deep caverns and the the twisting rivers that we collectively refer to as “The Internet”:
* My current favorite little pocket notebooks, Field Notes, have themselves a whole new redesigned website. They even have a nice little call out to my friend Ryan’s review. Check these things out if you have never heard of them. I know I have mentioned them before. Really good stuff.
* My friend Brad Blackman at Mysterious Flame reminds us all to do the right thing by keeping your Inbox the Inbox. Mark it clearly for you and the whole world to see if you need some help.
* I can’t say enough good things about this review at Lifehack.org of David Allen’s “Weekly Review” Audiobook. As a matter of fact, It might be too good. The review is so comprehensive in covering the main topics and ideas expressed in the Audiobook itself, you may not even need it after reading the review. There is a metric ton of goodness here for any of you GTDers out there. A must read… There, have I said enough good things yet?
* Speaking of “The David“, did you catch the wonderful three part interview with him over at Web Worker Daily? No? Clear a little time and work your way through it. Time well spent.
* I can seem to go a month without posting something about the 37 Signals guys but, hey, it is not my fault. Tell them to stop being so damn cool. Take some of the workspace experiments they are trying out amongst themselves. Four day workweeks are standard, paying for peoples hobbies and passions, liberal discretionary spending policies. Every business, especially the small ones, should take serious note of this. Happy, less stressed, content employes mean more productivity – not less.
* Need a little more focus from your meeting participants? Go topless. No, really, it is not what you think.

Some one sentence thoughts in defense of fiddling with your system…
I often find that switching things up a bit, to a new task/productivity application or cool new paper product, often brings the “interstingness” in my productivity system back to life for me and gives a whole new spark to my productivity.
In other words, I am so excited by the shinny new car that I tend to drive a little faster, turn up the radio and sing along with a joy an exuberance I have long since lost.
While the basics of the system (capture, review, do) never really change, and neither do some of the tools that just plain work for me, I like changing things up a bit for freshness.
Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly people who are more interested in searching for the “perfect productivity system” then in actually implementing and sticking with one.
There are also people who think that the perfect piece of software or someone else’s methods will solve all of their productivity problems like the holy grail.
I am not defending this behavior.
What I am defending is people who have a system in place who regularly change out the tools they may use to implement that system just to try out new things and keep it all fresh.
It is all about developing a system you trust after all, if you have that then the tools should be fairly interchangeable.

I have been an active user (and mostly a fan) of Apple’s iDisk feature. It is probably the main reason I have kept my .Mac membership for so long. With the recent increases in storage there I thought I would never even look in any other direction. That being said, along with the recent storage increase has come even more flakiness. Sometimes, my iDisk will go for days with a “failure to sync” and then, mysteriously, just start working again. After trying everything possible to fix this, it still remains and has become something I just have accepted as “part of doing business” with .Mac because, well, I know I am not alone in my troubles.
Dropbox is a new file synchronization service that has just entered into private beta, and boy is it exciting. It takes all of the features of of other similar services (Box.net, FolderShare, and the aforementioned .Mac iDisk feature) and does them better, faster and more elegantly. I have been happily using it for a couple of weeks now and, dare I say, I am about a few days away from disconnecting my iDisk and never looking back.
In my mind, here are the ways that Dropbox beats iDisk:
* Syncing is faster. Way faster. As in “I can’t believe it synced the files that fast. I better open the file to make sure” faster. This is due, in part, to the fact that once a file is synchronized, and you then make changes to that file, only the changes are then synced. It is also due to the fact that the underlying technology is not Apple’s slow-as-dirt implementation of WebDav.
* It keeps a copy of any and all changes to your documents and files. Make a change that you wish you had not? Delete a file or folder by accident? No problem. Just log into the web interface and revert to a previous version – any pervious version. Or if it was a deletion, undelete it. That change will then sync to your machines. Awesome!
* You can login to the web interface and have access to your files from any machine. Therefore, if you are not on your machine and need to retrieve a file and have synced it with Dropbox, you can do so using a web browser. You can also upload new files via the web interface and those will then sync to the machines you have interfaced with Dropbox.
* You can also share any folder in your Dropbox with others, even if they do not have Dropbox. Simply enter the e-mail address of the person you wish to share with and they will get an e-mail with a link to that folder, granting them the access you have per the permissions you have given them.
To get an even better idea of Dropbox, they have a video demo up on their site that is worth checking out. As stated, this is still in beta and there are many more features coming down the pipe. The beta is closed right now but keep this service on your radar screen and sign up for an invite if any of this stuff may be even remotely useful to you.

A little something different for the remainders this time around. As some out there may know, I have been a long time practitioner and subscriber to Buddhist philosophy. While I am certainly no zen master, I have used these practices to keep a whole lot of daily stress (and many a personal demon) at bay.
I have recently been impressed by the number of great posts on meditation, mindfulness, zen practices and Buddhism that have been popping up amongst my productivity blog brethren and sisterhood. Here are just a few of the better ones that have caught my attention:
* 43 Folders: Video: Jon Kabat-Zinn on mindfulness and “falling awake” – This is a great commentary and link to a fantastic video of noted meditation and mindfulness expert, Jon Kabat-Zinn. The video was taken at a recent talk he did a Google. If you would like some sort of low impact introduction into the practice of these techniques, I can think of no better place to start than here. The video is longish (about an hour) but well worth tuning out for a bit to tune in.
* Zen Habits: 12 Essential Rules to Live More Like a Zen Monk – A few things that you can take away from the way a buddhist monk lives their daily practice. These include, doing one thing at a time, doing these things slowly, completely and with a deliberate effort to do less in order to appreciate and enjoy more.
* Dumb Little Man: Meditation Techniques for the Busy or Impatient – Meditation does not have to be some difficult, time consuming, years to master task that a lot of people perceive it to be. As a matter of fact, you can incorporate simple meditation into many ordinary daily activities. This post covers exactly that. The shower meditation is a particular favorite of mine. Good stuff.
Kudos to all who continue to allow this stuff to bubble up to the surface. I deeply believe that freedom from stress and worry is only achieved when we learn to let go of the past, allow the future to remain in place, and take real, honest, compassionate, right minded, action in the present. After all, if you waste energy worrying about things you can’t change, then you miss spending that energy right here and now – in this very moment- on the things you can.