you have mail. sadly
Regular readers, and those poor souls who’ve had the misfortune of working with me, will know I live by the to-do list. Life without lists would not be worth living as they allow me to take control of plans, convert them into actions and, theatrically, scribble them out: job done.
As it turns out the new-age self-explanatory phrase for this approach to personal productivity is ‘knowing-doing’. Seems pretty obvious to me but apparently the ‘knowing-doing gap’ comes into play more often than its more positive forerunner as we all know what we have to do but seldom get around to actually doing it. More knowing, less doing. And nowhere is this more visible than in our email inboxes.
For me, a list addict, the inbox is a never ending, but similarly, never completed, to-do list. But panic not, help is at hand in the form of Inbox Zero, and no prizes for guessing what its goal is. Inbox Zero is the wizard idea of self-confessed West-Coast geek, Merlin Mann (d’ya see what I did there!) and if there’s ever been a case of stating the bleedin’ obvious, ol’ magic Merlin is in danger of hoovering-up all the baubles. Mind, I love the simplicity in that each time you visit your inbox your sole intent should be to clear it and a mere three actions will suffice:
- Reply
- Action
- Delete or File
Could it really be so easy? Yes, provided you’re prepared to action the ones within your capability, push-back on the ones that aren’t and ignore the rest. But then we’re immediately back in the realm of ‘knowing-doing’ and different people react in different ways. Having taken-off like the proverbial emperor’s new clothes, plenty of studies have now been conducted and their results are eye-opening.
However, Inbox Zero brought anything but zen-like calm to the tech throng. In reality, the better you were at managing your inbox actions the less available time you actually ended up with. Many believed every email deserved an immediate, measured & thoughtful response, which further shackled them to their desks. Others, in the quest for the permanently perfectly clear inbox, found they resented the senders themselves and, either couldn’t easily log-off to allow the emails collect & clutter, or didn’t action the emails because the sender annoyed them so much. The reality was the more you did, the more you received and, well, the more you ended up doing. Not the ideal outcome for an initiative designed to create more free time. Furthermore, and for whatever reasons, if you answer emails in bed at midnight then you deserve the rod-for-your-own-back you’ve made.
After a speaking tour, numerous corporate gigs and constantly missing the deadline date for his well-advanced personal productivity tome, Mr Mann, realised the error of his ways declaring that dealing with your email was not, after all, a technical problem that could be solved by any efficient system. Email is a people problem. And you can’t fix people. Please reply, action or delete/file as you see fit.
