PastorHacks

Could you go 30 Days without email?

Before you answer a hearty "No way" or "Dream on," remember- you used to do it ALL THE TIME. You probably started ministry without email, and though it has helped in many ways- at what cost? 

Here's one woman who gave it up for month and discovered some interesting things about herself and others:

"My e-mail was making me sick. No, I'm not paranoid that it was emitting cancer-causing electricity. But whenever I opened my in-box, I noticed a creeping resentment.

I had come to hate e-mail, for all the reasons anyone does. It interrupts and overwhelms. It causes stress. It distracts the brain and encourages the fracturing of attention. Because it's devoid of verbal tone and facial expression, it leads to miscommunication, confusion, and hurt feelings. All for the sake of making our lives "easier."

I started thinking about the problem a few months ago, when I was burned out from a year of overwork at the theater company I run. By chance, I found myself with a copy of Carl Honoré's "In Praise of Slowness", a brilliant criticism of the culture of speed.

Honoré is a proponent of the Slow movement, which encourages a deceleration of everything from cooking to business management, driving to talking styles-- based on the belief that speed can produce disconnection from daily life. And every time I read the word "speed," I couldn't help substituting "e-mail."

Of course, I might never have read his book at all if I hadn't been kindly put on mandatory vacation by everyone in my life. One of my theater partners said, "Why don't you take four weeks? You can't get anything done over the holidays, anyway."

Though I burst out laughing, I conceded, kind of: I took three days. And after they passed, I took another. And another. I put up an outgoing message on my e-mail saying I'd be away for an entire week. Then total irrationality struck. I couldn't take vacation for the rest of my life, but I began fantasizing about what would happen if I gave up e-mail for good.

In the end, I decided on a 30-day e-mail detox. No e-mail, in or out, for one month. Anyone can do a month, right?"

Read the rest here

Best of 2008: How to STOP checking email nights/weekends...

Tim Ferris has got the right idea here...

Investment bankers aren't known for their impulse control. Several global firms in Zurich don't allow their bankers to check email more than twice per day. The reason is simple: the more they check email, the more compelled they feel to send email. Technologist Robert Scoble has said that for each email he sends, he gets 1.75 to 2 messages in return. This phenomenon highlights the unscalable nature of most time-management approaches: striving to do more just produces increasingly more to do.

Fifty email messages beget 100, which beget 200 and so on. It's impossible to manage this with a results-by-volume (or frequency) approach. There are two cornerstone behavioral changes for reversing this trend: check email less frequently (so we send fewer messages) and send fewer messages when we do check (so we trigger fewer exchanges).

Here are eight concrete tips and services for digital minimalism that can help eliminate—as a start—compulsive inboxing during the evenings and weekends.

Treat all of them as short experiments and customize.

1. "Batch" email at set times.

   Have an email-checking schedule and do not deviate. There is an inevitable task-switching cost otherwise—U.S. office workers spend 28% of their time switching between tasks due to interruption, and 40% of the time, an interrupted task is not resumed within 24 hours. Use template autoresponders to alert people of your email schedule and encourage them to call if something needs faster attention. The "urgent" email-to-call conversion is usually less than 10%.

   This gives you breathing room to focus on predefined to-do's instead of responding to manufactured emergencies and ending the day with nothing to show for it.

   Alternative approaches include appending your signature with your email schedule, having only email from certain contacts forwarded to your Crackberry/PDA, and—if a manager of a small group—setting an inbox checking schedule for internally-generated email. Ensure that your first batch is around 10 or 11 a.m. and never first thing in the morning, as you want a meaningful volume (1/4-1/3rd of the daily total), and you should accomplish at least one critical to-do before going into reactive mode.

2. Send and read email at different times.

   Go offline and respond to all email from a local program such as Outlook or Mail to avoid having the outgoing flow interrupted by immediate responses.

   Ever noticed how effective it is to respond to your email while on an airplane? Manufacture that environment by going offline to batch send. 

3. Don't scan email if you can't immediately fix problems encountered.



   One simple example: don't scan the inbox on Friday evening or over the weekend if you might encounter work problems that can't be addressed until Monday. This is the perfect way to ruin a weekend with preoccupation. Remember that just as income has no value without time, time has no value without attention.

4. Don't BIF people during off-hours.

   "BIF" stands for "before I forget" and refers to emails sent on evenings or weekends out of fear of forgetting a to-do or follow-up. This sets a mutual expectation of 24/7 work hours and causes a plethora of problems. There are a number of better alternatives. First, use a service like Jott.com instead that allows you to send voice reminders via cell, which are transcribed and sent to your inbox or someone else's. If to someone else's, be sure to add "no need to respond until [next work hours]." Second, if you prefer low-tech, externalize follow-ups and to-do's in a small notebook like a Moleskine instead of entering the "bet you can't eat just one" inbox.

5. Don't use the inbox for reminders or as a to-do list.

6. Set rules for email-to-phone escalation.

7. Before writing an email, ask yourself: "what problem am I trying to solve?" or "what is my ideal outcome?"
8. Learn to make suggestions instead of asking questions.

Read the rest here

Email brevity...

My emails have been getting shorter and shorter... sometimes I wonder if people think I'm angry or rude, because I pad my communications with less and less fluff. It's out of necessity, really. There's just too much email coming my way to spend an hour composing a magnum opus on anything.

Nice takes time- and if email is meant to be a time-saver, not a time waster (how's that one working out???), then I can't ditch niceness altogether, but... brevity has to be a top priority.

I avoid one and two word emails because they often DO get read as gruff. But somewhere between one word curtness and loggarhea there's a happy middle. 

Here's a great way to keep it brief AND make sure people understand the reason for the brevity is not them... it's you!

To make the reason for the brevity clear to people,  my signature now has a link in it:

Q: Why is this email 5 sentences or less?
A: http://five.sentenc.es

Sendible.com

So- right now I have a number of reminders set up on Backpack that are there to help me remember to send specific emails to specific people at specific times. 

Whew. 

What if instead of setting up a reminder, getting said reminder, then writing and sending the actual email I could just compress all that into one step and write an email that would automatically send later?

Not sure if there's an Outlook way to do this- I imagine so... but if not, check out Sendible.com

Schedule messages

Plan ahead and send messages to your friends, colleagues and customers using email, sms and your social networks. Sendible integrates seamlessly with your email service and social networks and provides you with easy access to your email and social contacts.

There's another, easier way to schedule emails in Mac Mail, though it takes a couple of steps in installation- I detail that here

Other options or ways to send that reminder to others at specific times? 

Mail Badger for Apple Mail

I dig Dockstar... I have multiple mail accounts and Dockstar's ability to tell me at a glance what account a new piece of mail is coming into is great... it allows me to pay attention to what I'd like to pay attention to, and ignore the rest. I like Dockstar so much, I paid $8 for it.

And as a result of me paying that $8, a free utility which does the same thing has now been released :)

Mail Badger... 
"

• Supports any number of badges, limited only by available memory and performance
• Complete control and freedom over the position and size of badges on the dock icon
• Badges can be colorized and made partially transparent
• Users can set their own custom images to be used on badges (Mail Badger comes with four built-in shapes)
• Configurable fonts and other text attributes for the number displayed on each badge"

So, in other words, you can set a special notification for your "me@SpongeBobFan.com" email address... awesome!

Check it out

(ht:tuaw.com)

Types of email...

There are only 6 types of email, and only 0 reasons to have an inbox full of them.

It's not a hard thing to process down to zero in your inbox- you just need to look at each email and decide which kind of the following 6 it is, and then you'll know what to do with it:

• Email you've read and there’s no next action for you in it or there is and you can do it in 2 minutes or less/have done it and you don’t need to keep it for reference. You may delete it!
• Email you've read and there's no action for you associated with it right now but maybe at a later time. So someday it or tag and file it!
• Email you've read and decided there is an action but you are not sure what the action is. So, either put it in waiting (until you know what to do),  or someday it!
• Email you've read, know what the action is and know you can't do it in 2 minutes or less. Put it on a to do/Next Action list in the appropriate context, and put the email either in the trash or the action folder.
• Email you've read acted on and are now waiting for a reply or next action from someone else to complete the loop. Put it in Waiting.

But Bob, you say... I counted the little bullet points and that's only 5 types  of email!
Very observant, padawan learner... what's the only kind of email there's any REAL justification for to have in your inbox?

"Unread."

Quick poll- answer in the comments...

How many emails do you currently have in your inbox?

How to STOP checking email nights/weekends...

Tim Ferris has got the right idea here...

Investment bankers aren't known for their impulse control. Several global firms in Zurich don't allow their bankers to check email more than twice per day. The reason is simple: the more they check email, the more compelled they feel to send email. Technologist Robert Scoble has said that for each email he sends, he gets 1.75 to 2 messages in return. This phenomenon highlights the unscalable nature of most time-management approaches: striving to do more just produces increasingly more to do.

Fifty email messages beget 100, which beget 200 and so on. It's impossible to manage this with a results-by-volume (or frequency) approach. There are two cornerstone behavioral changes for reversing this trend: check email less frequently (so we send fewer messages) and send fewer messages when we do check (so we trigger fewer exchanges).

Here are eight concrete tips and services for digital minimalism that can help eliminate—as a start—compulsive inboxing during the evenings and weekends.

Treat all of them as short experiments and customize.

1. "Batch" email at set times.

   Have an email-checking schedule and do not deviate. There is an inevitable task-switching cost otherwise—U.S. office workers spend 28% of their time switching between tasks due to interruption, and 40% of the time, an interrupted task is not resumed within 24 hours. Use template autoresponders to alert people of your email schedule and encourage them to call if something needs faster attention. The "urgent" email-to-call conversion is usually less than 10%.

   This gives you breathing room to focus on predefined to-do's instead of responding to manufactured emergencies and ending the day with nothing to show for it.

   Alternative approaches include appending your signature with your email schedule, having only email from certain contacts forwarded to your Crackberry/PDA, and—if a manager of a small group—setting an inbox checking schedule for internally-generated email. Ensure that your first batch is around 10 or 11 a.m. and never first thing in the morning, as you want a meaningful volume (1/4-1/3rd of the daily total), and you should accomplish at least one critical to-do before going into reactive mode.

2. Send and read email at different times.

   Go offline and respond to all email from a local program such as Outlook or Mail to avoid having the outgoing flow interrupted by immediate responses.

   Ever noticed how effective it is to respond to your email while on an airplane? Manufacture that environment by going offline to batch send.
   

3. Don't scan email if you can't immediately fix problems encountered.



   One simple example: don't scan the inbox on Friday evening or over the weekend if you might encounter work problems that can't be addressed until Monday. This is the perfect way to ruin a weekend with preoccupation. Remember that just as income has no value without time, time has no value without attention.
   

4. Don't BIF people during off-hours.

   "BIF" stands for "before I forget" and refers to emails sent on evenings or weekends out of fear of forgetting a to-do or follow-up. This sets a mutual expectation of 24/7 work hours and causes a plethora of problems. There are a number of better alternatives. First, use a service like Jott.com instead that allows you to send voice reminders via cell, which are transcribed and sent to your inbox or someone else's. If to someone else's, be sure to add "no need to respond until [next work hours]." Second, if you prefer low-tech, externalize follow-ups and to-do's in a small notebook like a Moleskine instead of entering the "bet you can't eat just one" inbox.
   

5. Don't use the inbox for reminders or as a to-do list.

   
   

6. Set rules for email-to-phone escalation.

   
   

7. Before writing an email, ask yourself: "what problem am I trying to solve?" or "what is my ideal outcome?"
8. Learn to make suggestions instead of asking questions.

Read the rest here

10 Steps to being an Email Ninja...

From the 4 Hour Work Week blog...

I don’t know about you, but I get dozens — if not hundreds — of emails a day.

Unlike most people, however, I’m able to process through them, respond quickly, and get my inbox empty in 20 minutes (checking perhaps 2-3 times a day).

In fact, I respond so quickly, and empty my inbox so quickly, that friends have called me an “email ninja”.

Let’s look at some simple strategies for being able to get your inbox to done in as little time as possible…

Pre-empt
The first stage of any email strategy is to stop any unnecessary email from getting into your inbox in the first place. When I said I get perhaps hundreds of emails a day, I deceived a bit — most of those emails never make it to the inbox. They go straight to the spam folder or the trash. You only want the essential emails in your inbox, or you’ll be overwhelmed.

1. Junk. I recommend using Gmail, as it has the best spam filter possible. I get zero spam in my inbox. That’s a huge improvement over my previous accounts at Yahoo and Hotmail, where I’d have to tediously mark dozens of emails as spam.

2. Notifications. I often get notifications from the many online services I use, from Amazon to WordPress to PayPal and many more. As soon as I notice those types of notifications filling up my inbox, I create a filter (or “rule” if you use Mail.app or Outlook) that will automatically put these into a folder and mark them as read, or trash them, as appropriate. So for my PayPal notifications, I can always go and check on them in my “payments” folder if I like, but they never clutter my inbox.

3. Batch work. I get certain emails throughout the day that require quick action (like 10-15 seconds each). As I know these emails pretty well, I created filters that send them into a “batch” folder to be processed once a day. Takes a couple minutes to process the whole folder, and I don’t have to see them in my inbox.

4. Stupid joke emails. If you have friends and family who send you chain emails and joke emails and the like, email them and let them know that you are trying to lessen the huge amount of email you have to deal with, and while you appreciate them thinking of you, you’d rather not receive those kinds of messages. Some people will be hurt. They’ll get over it. Others will continue to send the emails. I create a filter for them that sends them straight in the trash. Basically, they’re on my killfile. If they ever send an important email (which is rare), they’ll call me eventually and ask why I haven’t responded. I tell them that their email must be in my spam folder.

5. Publish policies. As most people who email me get my contact info from my website, I’ve created a set of policies published on my about page that are designed to pre-empt the most common emails. If people follow my policies, I will get very little email. For example, instead of emailing me to ask for a link, they can save the link in my del.icio.us inbox … for suggestions or comments or questions, they can post them on a couple pages I created for that purpose. I’m also planning on creating an FAQ page for more common questions and issues. These policies remove the burden on me to respond to every request — I still read the comments and questions, but I only respond if I have time. My inbox has been under a much lighter burden these days.

Processing the rest
So now that only the essential emails come into your inbox, the question is how to get it empty in 20 minutes?

Read the rest here...

Value...

Some wisdom from Tim Ferris, author of the 4-Hour Work Week:

Once you realize that you can turn off the noise without the world ending, you’re liberated in a way that few people ever know.

Just remember: if you don’t have attention, you don’t have time. Did I have time to check e-mail and voicemail? Sure. It might take 10 minutes. Did I have the attention to risk fishing for crises in those 10 minutes? Not at all.

As tempting as it is to “just check e-mail for one minute,” I didn’t do it. I know from experience that any problem found in the inbox will linger on the brain for hours or days after you shut-down the computer, rendering “free time” useless with preoccupation. It’s the worst of states, where you experience neither relaxation nor productivity. Be focused on work or focused on something else, never in-between.

Time without attention is worthless, so value attention over time.

Read the rest here

It's okay to disconnect...

Memo to self: It's okay to disconnect.

You don't have to answer the phone. They'll leave a message. In fact, you are under no legal obligation to even have the phone on. Go ahead. Turn it off for a bit.

You don't have to have your email program/Outlook/Entourage/whatever open all the time.

You don't have to be in touch 24-7. Remember when going to the beach or the mountains for the day meant actually going to the beach or the mountains? You were out of reach. You checked messages when you got home. Didn't that feel good?

But people today have been conditioned by instant communication to expect instant replies. Maybe it's time to start conditioning them differently?

BlackBelt Productivity has a great run down on some ways to turn off and drop out, even if it's just in bits and pieces, and begin to get some sanity back...

We all know that the information that is available to us is growing exponentially. We are being engaged through email, cell phones, and IM. The number of decisions that we have to make each day is growing. It seems we are all living life in fast-forward.

So how so we break away and get some solitude?

1. Limit your availability.

- It is ok to turn off the cell phone and computer for a while. In spite of popular opinion…turning off your electronic gadgets will not cause a part of you to die.

2. Limit distractions

Set boundaries for distractions

- Check email at set times. Turn of email notifications. Feel free to use an “out of office” to inform others of your email times.
- Only watch preplanned television. Plan ahead (with your family if need be) what you will watch. Do not just surf channels.
- Don’t just surf the internet. Have a purpose when you are online.
- Use commute time (if you commute) to think and reflect.

Click here to read the rest...