Coping with Email Bankruptcy
Like so many other web workers I have had to deal with communications "bankruptcy" (not my term, but one I'll use for now). I'm not at the point when I am going to delete all my emails and start over- I'm not nearly important enough for that anyway- but I can see my email habits getting worse and the task of sorting through them all becoming harder everyday.
So before I get to the point of meltdown, I am going to try to take some actions to get things back in order. I don't know if I'm wasting my time, but I'm hoping it's not too late to do some good.
Here are the communications tools I use that eat away at my (working) life and the actions I have taken or plan on taking...
- Email- Obviously this is the main culprit. First of all, I have programmed Thunderbird to only check my main email once every 20 minutes, instead of every 10. The secondary email will be checked once every 120 minutes. I won't be hitting the check-it-now button if I can avoid it and I have been using an extension that hides Tbird when it's not in use. For Gmail I am going to try to just check it less and when I do check to respond immediately. I may move all my mail to Gmail, because I can sort and search through this more efficiently than in Tbird.
- Inboxes- This is a separate issue from email, in my opinion. I would love to keep empty inboxes, but I don't think it's feasible or even practical. I am going to try to keep it so I don't have to scroll to see all the messages, this means a maximum of about 30 emails in there.
- RSS- This is a hard one, because I like to keep up on the news and because Google Reader can't be set to only refresh ever 60 minutes (or another set amount of time). I am trying to keep Reader closed and to only visit it when I know I have at least 15 minutes to burn. I am going to try to do more reading in less sessions and focus on doing it first thing in the morning and after normal work hours.
- Social Networking- I have found these, without exception, to be a a waste of time. While I do plan on maintaining my Linkedin page, all my other pages (there are not many) are locked down with as much privacy/security as possible. This is not a method that I feel is worth investing my time in and while it may be fun, it is not at all effective for communications. Almost anyone that I want to be in touch with has a better way of getting a hold of me.
- Instant Messaging- So far this is unresolved. Not many people have my IM accounts so this is not a major issue and I try not to share account information. I am also trying to move from AIM to Google Chat as it has searchable logging and it is much less disruptive. I did move from the AIM tool to GAIM about a year or two ago and it was a major improvement.
- Cell Phone- I am way too good about picking up my cell phone. I have always made this and email the sure-fire ways to get in touch with me within minutes and now I am being punished for it. I am trying to focus more on text messaging and, for longer conversations, email, so I can keep lengthy phone discussions to a minimum. Email allows for conversations that are searchable and I have the exact wording in my records, both of which are becoming more important.
- Video Conferencing- This might be a good way to cut on face-to-face meetings but I am not sure how feasible it is at this point. Definitely something to investigate...
