Category: Email

Yes, This is a Vacation From You

“I’m on vacation, and I’ve deleted your message —really” – Dave Thomas

Now, imagine you’re going on a multi-week vacation. You visit the USPS and ask them to not just put a hold on your mail – just burn every piece of it.

Bold.

Proud.

Vacation.

It’s consistent with my view that the more important/busy/valuable/highly-paid you are – the less direct interaction with technology you’ll have.

Vinh on Email

“Email is not broken, if you ask me. It could be better, for sure, but I don’t think it requires the drastic changes that so many other people seem to believe are necessary. And I certainly don’t need messaging intermediaries entering the picture. These alternatives just fracture what is for me a pretty well consolidated experience — if you want to reach me, my email address is pretty easy to find” – Khoi Vinh

For some reason, this reminds me of a line from my favorite movie about work and business:

“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. “

REmail

I’m so tired of doing this kind of thing in silos. Email is mine. Google+ is Google’s. In terms of location, I feel like I’m in a corporate setting in Google+, and I feel like I’m at home when I’m in email. The reason, aside from design differences, is that email is free-as-in-freedom. Its protocols are NEA: Nobody owns them, Everybody can use them, and Anybody can improve them. Not the case with these commercial Web dairy farms. – Doc Searls

Each day, there’s some number of Google+, Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter notifications in my email inbox. Ironic that these communications services, seemingly wanting to be as ubiquitous as email, need to use email as a primary notification service.

And the daily deal space (Groupon, Living Social, et. al.) are 95% email.

Every couple of days, I’m asked, ‘What comes after Twitter, Facebook, (etc)?’

I don’t know, I’m in email.

How I Reached Inbox Zero(ish)

Something must be in the air. Like Dave, I’ve been making a concerted effort to clean out my email inbox over the past couple weeks.

All year, I’ve been fluctuating between 80 – 140 messages, not including the hundreds sitting in my ‘Respond to’ folder.

For the past week, I’ve been steadily at Inbox Zero.

With 17 2 in my ‘Respond to’ folder and the oldest message is from June ’09 not Feb ’09.

Here’s how I’ve tamed my inbox in 3 steps:

  1. Read each email message and determine a what the next action is.
    This is the hardest step.
  2. Write down the next action.
    I have a ThingsToDo.txt file I use w/ Quicksilver’s Append Text to File action.
  3. Ruthlessly file into a project folder or delete.

All of this is leading up to a couple ideas I want to implement for ongoing communications management – but it will only work once this backlog is cleaned out.

Arik Jones on Failbox

I’m please to see Arik Jones keeping the Failbox torch burning – in a post on the need for a smarter email client

” However, it could group todays messages in a “top 25 most important” list. That’s all I’d ever see for an inbox. Talk about getting your email priorities straight.” – Arik Jones

And yes, he mentions Cullect as an example of a successful recommendation system. Guaranteed to catch my attention.

FailBox: The Broken State of Email Clients – Part 3

“Last week a friend send me an email, while I was traveling. So he got my ‘out of office reply’.”- Wolfgang Luenenbuerger

Wolfgang goes on to describe how – in an age of instant messaging, mobile devices, and wifi – the ‘out of office’ reply is as anachronistic as the busy signal.

Both signals assume synchronicity and place are more valuable than the communication itself.

It’s rare that either are.