Productivity

Productivity

The Seven Deadly Sins of Email

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There are only seven? What about those utter bastards who don’t put subject headings on so you have to open the message RIGHT NOW to see that it is ALWAYS trivial nonsense that seriously could’ve waited?

Asian Efficiency, a site that I like very much, has a piece that I think is more about you than it is about your email. Specifically, number 1 of these sins is definitely your fault:

Opening email first thing in the morning.

When you open your email first thing in the morning, you are opening up Pandora’s Box. There is both good and evil that could be waiting for you in there. However, the sin comes from the false urgency you get from all of the good, the bad and the ugly emails.

Why is starting your day with email so deadly?

Willpower tends to be higher earlier in the day. That means you’ll be able to provide your best energy and effort to your most important task (MIT).

When you open and respond to email first thing, you are basically telling the world, “What I had in mind for today is not nearly as important as what you had in mind.”

Responding to urgent requests early will also train the requestor to send you more urgent requests. You will then find yourself spending more time working on “other people’s agendas” rather than your own.

Tackling email early in the day is one of the most sinister of sins because responding to emergencies can make you feel productive, responsible and even important. However, more times than not this habit prevents you from creating long term, lasting value.

Starting your morning with a number of little emergencies found in your inbox has the tendency to creep into the rest of your day. If you’ve ever found yourself exhausted from work at the end of the day despite the fact you did not accomplish anything you intended to… early am email could be the reason why.

The 7 Deadly Email Sins – Zachary Sexton, Asian Efficiency (undated but probably 28 July 2014)

Read the full article for more about what exactly you can do instead of that and six more things that I hope you’re doing now because I know I am. We can stop it together, right?

Fight! Fight! Fight! – The Make-Up Sequel

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Just yesterday I found a Fast Company article recommending that we stop being peacemakers and sometimes just land a good punch in first. Naturally, as a civilised man, this didn’t appeal at all. Naturally, as a writer, the dramatic implication appealed a lot. And very naturally as someone who writes for a living, the notion recalled Very Many Incidents where it would’ve been a Very Bad But Oh So Right idea.

Now Fast Company is saying well, hang on a minute there, let’s think about this.

You’ve had an interaction with a coworker during which you felt hurt, angry, misunderstood, and wronged–clearly it was an upsetting and difficult situation.

You’ve Just Had a Fight with a Coworker – Now What? – Robert V Keteyian, Fast Company (13 August 2014)

Translation: you lost.

Keteyian’s full article accepts that sometimes the only way to deal with it is to say you should see the other fella: there are people you will never convince or be convinced by, there are people who fight for fighting sake and there are times their fight is not with you. They say it’s about some particular project you’re both working on but actually they’re seriously narked that they are on this job instead of having got the promotion they so rightly deserve. In all these cases and more, let it be and maybe practice a bit more in a boxing ring.

But when both sides are actually reasonable and both sides want the right thing, talk about it. This means asking them for a chat – good luck with that – but it also means digging in deep about yourself:

Now, here’s the really hard part. Change the story you developed–in which you got hurt–to include what you learned from the other person.

The reason this is so hard is that the emotional impact is embedded in your experience. What happened to you is what happened to you. However, the beliefs you connect to that experience need to include your new understanding, what you just learned from your coworker.

Getting to that understanding with someone can be tricky. When difficult interactions are revisited, one person may say, “I may have said that, but it’s not truly what I meant,” and the other may respond, “Yes, but if you said it, then you must have meant it.” This, of course, leads nowhere.

When talking, be sure to give each other enough time to fully express thoughts and feelings; talk about what’s really important to you; explain how you were affected by what the other person said and did; and apologize for anything you said or did that hurt the other person.

Be sincere about it, though, would you? None of this “I apologise if I caused you any offence you namby-pamby weakling” stuff.

Read the full piece for more about how to start this dialogue and handle it too.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

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When we write we know to put characters in conflict but in real life, we avoid that all we can. And quite reasonably so. But sometimes, it might be worth a bit of a scrap:

While some people plow through conflict to get their way, a 2010 study by Provo, Utah-based leadership training firm VitalSmarts found that 95% of employees have trouble voicing differences of opinion, which results in a loss of roughly $1,500 per eight-hour workday in lost productivity, doing unnecessary work, and engaging in active avoidance of co-workers for every crucial conversation they avoid.

“We’re constantly faced with choices and conflicts. We work through the vast majority. The conflicts that get the most attention are the ones that go bad or go wrong,” says Peter T. Coleman, psychology and education professor at New York City’s Columbia University and author of the forthcoming Making Conflict Work: Harnessing the Power of Disagreement.

Somewhere between browbeating and caving in every time you’re faced with someone else’s preferences, there’s a middle ground out of which can spring innovation and ideas.

How to Use Conflict to Your Advantage at Work – Gwen Moran, Fast Company (31 July 2014)

Moran’s full piece goes on to give five pointers on how and when to do it, starting with choosing your battles wisely.

Wunderlist 3 – the best free To Do app?

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Usually a question in a headline means the article will conclude ‘nope’ but this time, it’s more ‘perhaps’. When I do The Blank Screen as a full-day workshop, I include a section on To Do apps that begins with why you should use OmniFocus but pretty quickly goes on to why you shouldn’t and what you can use instead.

The reasons you shouldn’t use OmniFocus boil down to two: it doesn’t work on PCs or Android so if you do, there’s no point. And as reluctant as I am to say this since it has been such a big part of my life for a couple of years now, OmniFocus is not for everyone. It’s powerful and it’s complex and it costs a lot more than free.

Personally, it’s worth it. But if you’re just looking into this whole business of To Do apps, it’s hard to slap down a lot of cash straight away. Still, any To Do app is better than none and all of them are better than working on Post-It Notes that you keep losing.

So I recommend Wunderlist. Full disclosure: I’ve barely used it myself as I came across it after I’d swapped to OmniFocus. But I like what I see very much and, more importantly, it’s been recommended to me by attendees of The Blank Screen workshop too.

Now version 3 is out and the makers say:

Ten months ago – after launching Wunderlist 2, introducing Wunderlist Pro and Wunderlist for Business – we set out on a journey that we knew would take some time. Seeing millions of you organize your daily life with Wunderlist, share your grocery lists, track your favorite movies and run your business, we made a plan to rebuild Wunderlist from scratch, with the goal to make it better, faster and most importantly, ready for the future.

Although you couldn’t see the complex technology behind Wunderlist 2’s simple interface, you certainly felt the bumps in the road. Your lists didn’t always sync smoothly from your phone to your computer, you were missing a more modern interface or you wanted Wunderlist to be integrated with your calendar and others apps you were using.

Today, with Wunderlist 3 we are introducing the product we’ve always envisioned. One that sets the foundation for all the great new features and regular improvements that are going to come until the end of the year and beyond. It’s the fastest, simplest and most powerful Wunderlist you’ve ever used.

Wunderlist 3 is here – Wunderlist official site

Take a look at the makers’ video:

And now go download Wunderlist for iOS, Android, Mac, PC and more on the official site.

Video: how different To Do apps make you work

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There is nothing like trying out a To Do app for yourself and before settling on OmniFocus. But there is this:

Robert McGinley Myers of the Anxious Machines site has made a video showing the major To Do apps in action and talking about what is and isn’t satisfactory about them. I’m shocked how many of these I’ve used and recognise.

Gmail adds nice Unsubscribe feature

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Well, you’ve always been able to unsubscribe from advertising emails but Google is making it easier: if the email has a wee little unsubscribe link hidden at the bottom, Gmail will pop an unsubscribe link right up at the top where you can see it.

Two things to note. First, this is rolling out across Gmail but Gmail is big so this will take time and you may not see it just yet. But hold on, it’s coming.

Second – and trickier – think twice about unsubscribing. You know how you don’t always remember when you signed up to receive something? Occasionally you didn’t and it’s spam. In which case, hitting Unsubscribe sends a message – literally – to the spammer telling them that this is a real email account with a real human being reading it. No chance they’ll go “oh, okay, let’s take ’em off the spam list”.

Previously if I’ve had any doubt I’ve marked the emails as junk and let Mail (I use Apple’s Mail) deal with it. There is a wee problem with that: if the email is not junk, the fact that you junked it gets reported back to whichever company is delivering the emails. If enough people junk the emails, the sender is blocked. You can bet that spammers have ways around that so the only ones who suffer are legitimate companies that you really did sign up to receive emails from.

If you’re struggling with a huge amount of email newsletters and the like, take a look at Unroll.me. When you let it, Unroll.me scans your emails and gives you a list of everything that you can unsubscribe from – and lets you do that with a click. I’ve not used it myself but it comes recommended.

Work like you’re going on holiday

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I’m feeling this. Before I went away for my 20th wedding anniversary holiday, you know that I had to work like crazy. You do exactly this before any long break. And then you know that when you get back you’re going to be working like mad to catch up – plus you’ll find it hard to ramp back up to normal working speed.

It’s enough to make you ditch holidays.

But 99U suggests you pretend you’re going on more holidays and says:

The average worker’s backlog is around 30 hours, or roughly three or four days of things that are begging to be finished. How can you power through this nagging heap? Simple: treat it like you’re going on vacation.

Think of all the things that you do before you’re about to go on vacation — you rush to define the priorities, necessities and back-up plans to prepare your clients and/or team for a period of time in which you’ll be “off the grid.” Work like you’re about to go on vacation and you’ll be able to de-clutter and step far away from your projects without worry.

Backlogged? Work Like You’re Going on Vacation – Hamza Khan, 99U (8 August 2014)

I’m not sure I could keep up the pace myself. But Khan’s full piece includes advice about what to do in this faux pre-holiday time and how to manage it without burning out so much that you need a real break.

This is design

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It angers me – actually angers me – when people insist design is making things pretty. You get this a lot from PC users who say Mac ones are fools paying extra for pretty boxes when Windows is just as good. It’s like script writers who claim dialogue is a tasty little extra you add on your final draft. These are both bollocks but they’re pervasive and persuasive bollocks because they’re said by writers who can’t write dialogue and they’re usually said by PC users who couldn’t afford a Mac. I have more time for the PC users, I think scriptwriters who can’t write dialogue are like taxi drivers who can’t drive.

But it’s still bollocks. Dialogue and design are things you see on the surface but which reach down to the very bones – or they don’t work at all.

And here’s an example. I got this from an article on Business Insider which ran a report about an internal Apple University. This place tries to convey to new employees what design, and everything else, means to Apple. And it reportedly includes a point where a lecturer will show employees an image of a TV remote control. Business Insider believes it’s this one:

google-tv-remote-1

That’s a Google TV Remote built by Sony. It’s a TV remote. A remote control for your TV set. It looks like one of those model helicopter controls coupled to an ancient Blackberry or perhaps a label maker, but it’s a TV remote.

And then of course the Apple professor shows Apple’s equivalent:

apple-tv-remote-1

Yes, it’s prettier. But you’ll also use it. That’s the thing: not fancy aesthetics, not pretty pictures, but something that you will use to do something you want to do. Design is not about device per se, it’s about you. Making it work for you.

That’s design.

Essential morning preparation

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I’m back on the getting up to work at 5am lark after about a month away doing various jobs and then one of those there holidays. This morning I woke up, looked at the clock, saw it was 04:53 and said aloud: “Well, this is fun, isn’t it?”

Getting up at 5am for day 256 was as hard as some of the first few days but it was helped by one thing, gigantically hindered by one thing and conned by a third.

The Helpful Thing
I had a plan. I knew exactly what I was going to be working on the moment I had showered, made a mug of tea and sat down at the keys. No hesitation, no choosing, just straight to it: I was going to work on a particular book project. There’s a lot to do today but for the first hour, I’d do this and then it would be done plus I’d be on my way.

Until today I would’ve said that this is easily the biggest thing in working at stupid o’clock: if you go straight to the keys with a purpose and work for an hour, then at stupid o’clock plus one you feel you’ve really achieved something. Half of you now wants to go back to bed but half of you is bursting to continue and that To Do list looks pretty doable.

The Con
It’s 06:46 as I write this to you and I haven’t done a word of that book. Because right after I said “Well, this is run, isn’t it?” I rolled back away from the clock, looked at the ceiling and while waiting for the alarm thought: “Act 1: Lights up on Mabel. Very plainly dressed: specifically, no jewellery, no bag.”

Without planning to, I’d got the start of a script I’d been working up. Most of it was done, I was just struggling with certain elements like the start and there it was.

So that’s what I did instead of the book project. And now I should really go do the book project, except that I am still suffering from The Gigantic Hindrance.

The Gigantic Hindrance
The milk has gone off. Did you hear me at 05:10? Tilting back my freshly-showered head, my hair still damp, and my face raised to the heavens as I howled?

There are worse things in this world but a mug of tea with bits in is up there.

“If you work with assholes, no To Do list will help you work efficiently”

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So says designer Jessica Walsh. Don’t you love her for that? She was answering a question about how she works, what specific processes she has for handling her job and her full reply was:

The obvious answer is to-do lists and apps (Evernote, Clear, Sparrow, Text Expander, iCal). Most importantly though, I’d say to choose good clients and coworkers who are nice and open to interesting creative work. If you work with assholes / ego-maniacs / lazy people, no to-do list will help you work efficiently.

Designer Jessica Walsh quoted in 15 Designers Reveal Secrets For Staying Productive – Carey Dunne, Fast Company (8 August 2014)

I liked her pithy summary the best but the article is about her and 14 more designers all being asked various questions to do with their work and it’s an interesting read. It’s also a summary, really, of a much bigger project:

Since April, Samara, Russia-based designer Yevgeny Yermakov has been asking designers a series of five questions–about work habits, favorite books, career challenges, and creativity–and publishing their answers on his website. The project, “5 Questions for 100 Designers,” is growing into a trove of wisdom from the industry’s leading minds. Forty-four interviews are up so far, with designers from Jessica Hische to Debbie Millman to Michael Bierut.

Read Fast Company’s article for more extracts and links out to the growing 5 Questions project.