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E-Mail Addiction 12-Steps Stumbles

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the big-shock-here dept.

netbuzz writes "Talk about offering an alcoholic a drink? No. 2 of 12-step program for e-mail addiction: "Commit to keeping your inbox empty." ... Reuters is reporting today on this program from an executive coach. Here are 11 other reasons why it won't work." I know what the bottom of my inbox looks like, I just only get to see it for a few minutes a year.

5 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. This is just GTD by ellem · · Score: 2, Informative

    Empty Inbox
    Anything under 2 minutes do it

    Yadda yadda

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    1. Re:This is just GTD by jlf278 · · Score: 2, Informative

      the article is not talking about emails that require response WITHIN two minutes, but rather ones that would consume less than two minutes of your time.

    2. Re:This is just GTD by Imsdal · · Score: 4, Informative
      Huh? I think you miss the point on what the 2 minute rule in GTD is.

      The 2 minute rule says that when you process your inbox (any inbox, e.g. e-mail, physical, voicemail), and the result is that you should do something (as oppsed to delegate, file for reference or just plain delete), you should do it immediately. If, on the other hand, the action will take longer than 2 minutes, you should file it in your trusted system and continue emptying your inbox.

      The 2 minute rule most definitely does *not* say that you should ever be expected to answer any e-mail within 2 minutes, for exactly the reasons you list.

      I thought every computer geek worth his salt knew about all about GTD by now, but from your post and the moderation of it, I see that that's not the case.

    3. Re:This is just GTD by kbielefe · · Score: 3, Informative

      An easy way I found to use automatic rules to sort my email:

      • Anything sent only to me is much more likely to be something I have been waiting for, or something I would want to respond to quickly, so I usually read these right away, even if I don't end up responding right away. Of course, I'm not one of those people who gets email from potential clients, readers, fans, etc.
      • If my name is in the "To" box, but I'm not the only one, I set aside a few different times during the day to read those.
      • Anything sent to a mailing list or where I'm only CCed, I only read once a day, and frequently just delete after reading the subject line.
      • I ignore the "important" flag, except for people I know don't abuse it, like the system administrator who only uses it for stuff like emergency reboots.
      • I don't check personal email accounts at work.
      I've found this allows me to be interrupted when I want to be interrupted, but to make the interruptions minimal. Sometimes, I make specific rules for specific situations, but most of the time, these generic rules work great.
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  2. Re:I tried GTD... by TrentC · · Score: 3, Informative

    It takes me 3 minutes to figure out if something will take me less than 2 minutes to do, so I get a deadlock. The only real solution is writing post-its on a whiteboard.

    As with most things, people like to nitpick the fine details as a way of criticizing the whole.

    As a fairly new GTD user, I've discovered that much of GTD is meant to be used as guidelines or strategies, not divine commands from on high. The important principles of GTD are:

    1) Collect all of the unfinished tasks and projects in your life ("open loops" in GTD parlance).
    2) Go through that collection and decide what needs to be done with each open loop:
          * Can it be done right now, in 2 minutes or less? If so, do it.
          * If not, can you delegate it to someone else? If so, do so.
          * If not, what's the "Next Action" (more GTD jargon) that needs to be done, either to finish it or to move it to the next step?
    3) Keep track of your Next Actions in a trusted system -- notebook, PDA, text files, whatever -- so you know what needs to be done when you have time to do it.
    4) Once you know what all needs to be done, you are capable of making informed decisions as to what you should be doing at any given moment. (To me, this is the most significant point of GTD.)

    If you can make those principles work, the details are negotiable. If it takes you more than two minutes to figure out what needs to be done and your incoming traffic and workload permits it, set the threshold to 5 minutes. The GTD book itself usually describes seveal methods of approaching a step.

    This is what drives websites like Lifehacker and 43 Folders; people are sharing things that work for them or pointing out new things that can be used to implement GTD or otherwise improve personal productivity.

    (Yes, I know that parent was probably just trying to be funny. But I still wanted to throw my two cents out for people who haven't tried GTD, or tried and haven't been able to make it work.)

    Jay (=