Accidentally in Code

Tag: email

  • Habit: February & March

    Habit: February & March

    At the start of the year I wrote that my word for 2021 was habit. In January, I challenged myself to do something creative every day, a habit that I’ve continued (although not quite as diligently).

    In February, I challenged myself to do two things every day. The first was read a book, the second was exercise. I continued challenging myself to exercise in March, but replaced books with email.

    Reading Books

    Reading was prioritized because “typical” for me is finishing a book a week but I was barely picking up my kindle. Not reading is never a good sign for me, but some of it seemed like life changes – I used to read in cafes (lol), on planes (lmao), on a lazy morning in a hotel waiting to head to wherever I was going next (rofl). And then, cohabitation means that typically at mealtimes I eat with my partner and make conversation, rather than losing myself in a book.

    Forcing myself to set an intention and make it a habit helped a lot. Sometimes I just read a chapter, but some days it was more. I’m not back to reading a book a week, but around two a month, and I’m consistently making progress so that’s something.

    Email

    I am so so bad at email, and March let me test a theory that I’m bad at it because it backs up and becomes overwhelming. So in March I tried to chip away at it, or at least get through that day’s mail. I didn’t manage it every day – but I did manage it most days, and for the first time in… I don’t even know, I’m ending the month less behind on email than I started it. This momentum helped me make inroads on other things, and the random things for my taxes that were buried somewhere in my inbox have been dug out and dealt with.

    The challenge proved to me that chipping away at it helps, and the mindset of trying to stay on top of things stopped me from avoiding things until I forgot them, and pushed me to delete the things that might be interesting if I hadn’t read them within a couple of days. We’ll see if I can keep this up or if I am immediately buried again.

    Exercise

    The hardest one – I am truly tired of continually rebuilding this habit throughout this pandemic. I made it 26/28 days in February, and somewhat less in March. There were a couple of phases to this one.

    Phase 1: Redefine what “counts”.

    Pre-pandemic, I had a definition of “worked out” that was contingent on the gym and the pool. A year ago, I would focus on meeting my step goal. But everything being shut, and being constrained to a 5km radius and very limited hours of daylight, that wasn’t really working for me. It was really annoying to go for a 1 hour walk, but only have ~8K steps and be feeling like it “didn’t count”. Now we have a spin bike, so I refined it around “zone minutes” which worked better. Two months in, I’m less worried about metrics, I know when I exercised (and when I didn’t).

    Phase 2: Rediscover enjoyment.

    At the end of February I was consistently checking the box but… it felt like a chore. This felt even worse than not exercising at all in some ways – I’m someone who loves physical activity, but I wasn’t feeling that love. I would either begrudgingly walk the same circuit I’ve walked for the past year, or get on the spin bike with some TV show I felt ambivalent about, and try and clock the zone minutes as fast as I could so that I could do something else instead.

    Finally, I got the peloton app. I had been contemplating it but not doing it for weeks, mainly on the basis that 1) I hadn’t been taking spin classes before, so would I like it and 2) that was the only idea I had, so if that didn’t work… I had no more ideas.

    My first peloton class I ugly cried for… a lot of it. Turns out, it felt so good to really get my heart rate up and enjoy exercise that all the grief I have for the gym came pouring out of me. Now I’m trying to do a peloton class every other day, working up to longer ones, and on other days I either go for a walk or… chill. It took two months, but I feel much better about this habit.

    What’s Next?

    In April I’m focused on two things.

    Skincare. After having a bunch of issues that resulted in a trip to the dermatologist, I’m finally doing better, less strung out by the regime she has me on, and trying to rediscover my love of beauty products. In April I’m trying to do something every day that makes me feel good, whether it’s a mask, a scrub, or actually wearing makeup.

    Human contact. This timeline has been pretty isolating, and at times I feel like life is so boring I have nothing to say. My challenge this month is to have a meaningful human interaction with someone who isn’t my partner or a colleague every day. This already pushed me to make up a bunch of packages I’ve been meaning to send out for months, but y’know, more phone calls, more longer text message conversations, more making an effort to check in.

  • Do All The Things, GGD Sydney, August 2014

    Do All The Things, GGD Sydney, August 2014

    postits
    Credit: Karen Ann Glick

    Kris Howard talking about productivity.

    About getting stuff done like a grownup. Used to put stuff off to the weekend, and then not actually do it.

    The goal of productivity is to spend less time doing the stuff you don’t want to do so that you can spend more time on the stuff you do want to do.

    She’s a productivity faker, not a guru, or a ninja.

    Step 1: Get absolved. Inbox zero.

    • Make a folder called dmz.
    • Go to inbox, select all.
    • Put everything into it.
    • Go and sin no more.

    Idea: draw a line in the sand, and move forward. Declare inbox zero and order a nerd badge. Everything that is in there should be something you need.

    Step 2: Get Organised.

    • Keep it simple, the hipster PDA is a stack of notecards in a clip, or planner diary.
    • Lots of productivity apps in the app store.
    • Pick one, try it. If it doesn’t work try something else.
    • If using apps, Toodleoo. Take advantage of syncing, sharing.
    • Calendar: recurring events are your friend.

    Step 3: Get Things Done.

    • Stuff is anything in your life that is not where it is meant to be. Stuff that doesn’t have a place is in your head. Getting Things Done is the workflow for processing stuff.
    • Collect all stuff. This is the thing you are afraid of. This is the thing that stresses you out. Collect it, seems manageable.
    • Process. If under 2 minutes, do it immediately. If waiting, goes to tickler file. He suggests a physical file, the alternative is calendar.

    Project pile to track the next actions.
    When done, chuck it in the bin.
    When put a task on the list, tag it with a context.
    Iteration and review: review the tickler file, todo list.

    Stay Focused.

    • Pomodoro Technique:
    • Decide on task.
    • Set timer for 25 minutes.
    • Work until dings, record.
    • Take a short break.
    • Every 4 pomodoros, take a longer break.

    Build habits.

    Don’t break the chain.
    Mark off days when you work on that goal.
    Use your chain of marked off days as a motivator.
    Check out: dontbreakthechain.com

    So go home, blast the crap out of your inbox, make a pile of stuff on the kitchen table, and start getting things done like a boss!

  • Getting On Top Of Email

    Getting On Top Of Email

    99 Red Balloons
    Credit: flickr / Keegan Jones

    My inbox has been out of control for a long, long time. But – finally – I am down to 5 emails in my inbox! I’ve taken a series of steps over the last year or so that have helped me get to this point.

    Just One Inbox.

    I had a Fastmail account that I had had (and paid for!) since before GMail came out. I finally got around to importing everything I had kept there into my GMail inbox, and auto-forwarding everything. For important things, I changed my email address altogether. And – when prompted to put my credit card info in to pay for another year… I didn’t. It took me a few more months after that, still, to empty everything out of there, during which emails bounced – but so what? That is hardly the end of the world. Finally it was nothing more than a (free!) forwarded address.

    Unsubscribe. Unsubscribe. Unsubscribe.

    I mostly read and respond to email on my phone – archive from notifications on Android is really nice. But often unsubscribe is a pain on mobile, so I kept receiving endless amounts of emails from everywhere I had given my email address to. I don’t understand why staying a couple of nights in a hotel implies that I want to receive emails about the place forever. I had been taking a short-term approach to this, when I took the time to do anything at all, and just deleting them. I started unsubscribing from everything, and if I couldn’t (I’m looking at you academia and your calls for papers) I would mark as spam. I turned off email notifications for things like blog comments, and Google+, etc. This significantly reduced the number of emails I was receiving. Adding a couple of seconds per unwanted email would ultimately save me time.

    Find And Delete.

    The thing about unwanted emails, is they are rarely one-offs. One flight with an airline can start a life-long, one-way, monthly correspondence. I added another step to “unsubscribe” – which was search for that sender (or keyword), and label:inbox, and then select all and archive.

    The Email Game.

    Finally my inbox was at least not getting worse – from an all-time low of over 1000 undealt with emails, I was hovering around the 900 mark. Then I discovered The Email Game. Later that day, the unthinkable had happened. My inbox contained just 5 emails that I actually should (and plan to) do something with. Yes, I archived a lot of things that I should have responded to long ago, but I also found a friend’s blog from an email I had missed, and nearly $30 of Amazon credit.

    In the “game” you work through a set number of emails, and you have to action each one – archive, reply, boomerang. You can skip them (but try not to!). A timer counts down, and at the end you get some points.

    It’s gamification of email, but for me, it was less about the “game” than the UX – encouraging one-touch processing of email.

    Stats as follows:

    • Saw 561 total emails and saved 304m 57s
    • Archived 543
    • Deleted 0
    • Sent 3
    • Boomeranged 1
    • Skipped 17

    Anyway, my inbox is finally manageable! Now to keep it that way.

  • Immersion

    Immersion

    My email network for the last 9.3 years - created by Immersion
    My email network for the last 9.3 years – created by Immersion

    Overall Stats from Immersion
    Overall Stats from Immersion

    When I read about Immersion – a tool created by researchers at MIT which maps your email network – of course I had to map mine. It’s fascinating. I’ve removed the labels for other people’s privacy, but high level breakdown of which group is which follows:

    Green/Grey on the left: Ottawa networks. Grey is University, Green is non-University.
    Orange on the right: Kitchener/Waterloo network.
    Blue in the middle: Sydney network.

    My network of people that I email is getting smaller and more compact over time. This isn’t super surprising – I am doing less and less community stuff outside of work, and what I do within or with work, of course, gets done from  my corporate email address.

    I like the overall stats – it shows me sending and receiving (yay!) less email over time. Also if you look at the numbers – I only send about 20% as much email as I send. Which probably reflects me being pretty terrible at responding to emails, and also needing to unsubscribe from more things!

    Also interesting to note, is that basically none of my British friends are on there, and few of my Ottawa friends. Which makes sense, because they are the main reason I use Facebook.

  • Email Once A Day

    Email Once A Day

    Email
    Credit: flickr / Bruno Girin

    Back in May, I started checking email only once a day (and sometimes not at all if I had no meetings). I had to accept that no-email days would be scarcer than I’d like, but overall it’s been a good experiment. Typically I get through it as fast as possible (< 15 mins) and once a week I have a longer purge of my “star for later” items. Here’s what I’ve found:

    Most emails do not need an instant response…

    … and if someone is trying to make their disorganization your emergency, you probably don’t want to give them one anyway.

    I loathe having a reactive workflow and do my best to avoid it. A reactive workflow is terrible for your productivity. The argument against email once-a-day is that stuff arrives that you “need” to respond to. Sure, on occasion. What I’ve found is – not often. And by not being instantly responsive you train people to be organized in what they ask of you. In a real emergency, they can reach you by other means. I’m always on IM, and I make my phone number available. What’s amused me is when people have panicked because they couldn’t get me via those means, it’s not like me checking email more often would help. I mean, sure, even if I checked email more often, I wouldn’t check it whilst giving a talk.

    For me, the stuff I want to be responsive to arrives in other places – code reviews and bugs. I can check on those things there, not in my inbox. Then it’s more deliberate, “I’ve done my current task, what am I going to work on next?”

    Fewer hours at work, no discernable change in productivity.

    First thing I noticed – that I checked email when I was stuck. Second – I felt happier. Third – I was getting more done and going home earlier. You know the last 30 minutes of the day when you’re tired and not making progress? Email is a good time-filler there. Makes you feel productive, but really just keeps you away from your non-work life.

    People miss things anyway.

    People who check mail more say that they use filters heavily. They also admit that from time to time stuff gets filtered out that they should have read. Everyone is missing stuff. When you send an email and it’s important, and you don’t get a response, you follow up. I make a point of asking people for things in person wherever possible. But no system is perfect, so I advocate doing what works best for you and makes you happiest and most productive.

    Being transparent may not be the best way.

    Not everyone is wild about my attitude to email. It frustrates me, because I feel that I’m more on top of email than most, but because I’m transparent and set expectations (you’ll typically receive a response within 24 hours, but no promises), if someone wants to they can seize on it as something to complain about (provided they don’t have to provide concrete examples). I think you could check email once a day – maybe less! And, if anything comes up just trot out some excuse like, “oh I was in the zone, I didn’t get to email yet”, or “no, I must have missed that” or “sorry, bunch of meetings”, and get away with it…

    Make the most of it while you can.

    My job title is “Software Engineer”, not “emailer”. I’m ruthless on email because I’m only interested in it such that it allows me to be a better engineer, or further certain causes (female engineers). Right now, I am not seeing any great problems caused by my attitude to email. In 3 months I’ve missed perhaps 3 things, but am happier/more productive/going home earlier and it’s not clear that short of having my phone beep with every new email I wouldn’t have missed some things anyway. I don’t know how viable this approach will be as I progress. Can a tech-lead check email only once a day? Maybe. Can a manager? Definitely not (yet another excellent reason not to take the management track).

    So for now, I’m sticking with it. And enjoying it, because I’m not sure it will be viable forever.

    eMail
    Credit: flickr / Esparta

    Interesting case-study: I’ve been doing once-a-day on my work inbox but continuing as normal on my personal inbox. Work email status: under control, pretty on top of it. Personal email status: chaos.

  • Drawing Lines Around Your Day

    Drawing Lines Around Your Day

    Lines Color
    Credit: flickr / dOOnLoL

    Arriving, stressed, on a Monday morning the other week I decided to shut the mail tab on my browser, with no intention of opening it again. This impromptu panic started a new thing – I’m checking (work) email at most once a day, if I have a meeting. No meeting days – usually one a week – are now even better than before. I think I’m more productive, but it’s hard to quantify. Those half an hour chunks which seemed only good for going through email turn out to be surprisingly productive.

    I’m definitely happier and less stressed out by my inbox. I appreciate the good things that arrived (my patent is going through! Yay!) and get less stressed by the bad things. It could be the novelty – we’ll see how that goes. People are supportive of my eccentricity with respect to my inbox. It’s hardly a secret that I loathe email, and I’ve managed to keep the volume low by sending as little as possible.

    The worse thing that happens is that I miss something important, but if it’s that important someone will IM me. I missed meeting someone when they emailed at the last minute, which was unfortunate, but hardly the end of the world. The tradeoffs that seemed so worrying turn out to not be very bad at all.

    I think, though, that what really makes me happier is that I’m drawing lines around my day, which means that I feel more in control. It’s like not taking my laptop home with me after work. I could take it home with me and not work, which a lot of people seem to, but by not taking it home I don’t even give myself the option. It’s not, “oh I could catch up on X but I want to read my book instead” – it’s “I’m home now, what do I want to do?”

    Of course, there’s a lot of things which I don’t define as work which others might – and my personal laptop carries more than it’s share of guilt. Events to attend. Talks to prepare and papers to write. This blog. What’s important to me is that whilst I might be stressed out by having too much on, I’m not stressed out by my job. I’ve drawn a clear line in my head between what is my job, and what is not – even if it’s professionally helpful to me.

    There’s a few people at work who are legendary for their balance. They probably call it something different, but interacting with them I see that they too draw lines around their day. This is when I go home. I don’t work at the weekend.

    Those people legendary for balance? Also incredibly productive.

    My view is that that I work as long as I’ll be productive, then I leave. I don’t work later than that – at best, I borrow productivity from tomorrow. At worst, I do that and mess things up that I have to fix tomorrow. As a result, sometimes I leave at 4, sometimes I leave at 7. Overall, I don’t think I do more than 45 hours a week.

    I’m not sure it matters too much what the lines are, or where you draw them. The point is, to have some – you’ll be happier for the control.

    What lines do you draw around your day?

  • Selective Email Alerts

    Selective Email Alerts

    alarm
    Credit: flickr / denn

    I’m checking my email more frequently than I would like at the moment. Not because I’m procrastinating, but because there are about 3 people who I expect to hear from soon and I want to know as soon as I do.

    Trying out Priority Inbox which is good, but where’s the “make a song and dance when I get an email from person X” button?

    If only this existed… I could go back to once a week email apart from about 5 people max. That would be awesome.

    I could almost split my inbox in two. The one that needs daily tending, and the one that needs sporadic attention. Hmm. I’m not sure I spend too much time in my inbox, but I probably do spend too much time trying to stay out of it.

  • Email: Getting a Grip

    Email: Getting a Grip

    Close-up of mole
    Credit: Wikipedia.fr

    So the most awesome thing happened at GHC, I asked a question at a panel and afterwards a girl came up to me and said “I think I’ve been reading your blog”. Seriously. Made. My. Day. Then I was skimming my RSS feed and I found a comment on this post:

    For the record, a friend from a company called Palantir asked me to send you a note as recently picked up a signed copy of a book I wrote. I was happy to do so. Unfortunately, it’s taken ~ 30 minutes to figure out the best way to contact you (without following you on Twitter/LinkedIn/Etc) is to post to the blog… on this particular entry… which was, relatively, a lot of work.

    I get that email is often a flood of uselessness, but it is a means to make a quick connection with little overhead.

    In unrelated news, come have lunch at Palantir — some of the brightest folks you’ll meet.

    And then it occurred to me that the girl mentioned above had said she’d thought about emailing me, but hadn’t because I don’t read it. And people are still asking me for things – I had an email recently that said something along the lines of “I want you to do this thing, for free, unless I can find someone better”. So I’m still getting the email I don’t want. And the email I would want people aren’t sending me because they’re nice and see that I hate it. Meanwhile, I’ve clearly irritated this guy who’s written this awesome book that I’m really excited to read. And – I’m talking big game about how women in CS need role models and then deliberately making myself unavailable – seems a little hypocritical!

    Hmm. Time for a rethink.

    Here’s the thing – I am a miserable failure at email. And I don’t like failing at things, so I’ve opted for ignoring it instead. So I need a strategy. When I realized writing a resume didn’t work to my strengths, I hired someone to write it and they did an awesome job. So perhaps I can hire someone to integrate my inboxes and come up with a system to manage it, or get a remote PA.

    However, that seems a bit melodramatic and the reality is that I need to get better at dealing with process rather than avoiding it. So here’s my plan!

    • First, clearly the usability of my website is not what it should be and I’m annoyed that Dreamweaver broke my twitter widget. So I’m going to move everything over to WordPress.
    • Second, I’m going to migrate all my email addresses to gmail and add filtering and this priority inbox malarky.
    • Third, I’m going to reveal my email address. It’s catehuston and I use gmail. So if you’ve been thinking about emailing me but haven’t… go for it. It’s not my preferred medium – I left IBM with 33 unread and my attitude to it is not going to change overnight. But I’m really going to try and rethink this and try and suck less.

    How do you deal with email? Or other stuff that you hate and avoid? I need your wisdom!

  • Email: I’m Sorry, but I Hate It

    Drowning in email
    Credit: flickr / -Xv

    I loathe email as a form of communication, I do. Having an iPhone has not made me any better at dealing with it, in fact it has made things worse – I can now monitor it in dead time and if there’s nothing urgent then there’s no need to actually check my email.

    So, if I can’t reply in 3 sentences or less it waits until I next attack my inbox. I have a goal of once a week, but there are always more interesting things to do so once a month is around average. Normally after I’ve completed something significant I’ll look at my overflowing inbox and try and make some inroads. The thing I use my iPhone for most w.r.t. email? Deleting it.

    A truly urgent email that requires me to use a computer might get a response within 3 days. I know, this seems unreasonable and honestly, I don’t get that much email compared to some people. The point is, I get more than I want.

    email pebbles
    Credit: flickr / Will Lion

    Two summers ago, I quit Facebook, didn’t have a cellphone, and only checked email once a week. The effect on my productivity was phenomenal. That was when I created much of the material and ideas that became my programming curriculum that was taught across the US and that I taught in Shanghai. These ideas have since evolved further to and I created this workshop. I’m hankering for another such period of freedom from electronic communication, but I’m not sure I could give up Twitter. Note – my job at that time was extremely social, so it wasn’t like I had become actually reclusive, just electronically so.

    Honestly, I think the reason I hate email so much is that primarily what I receive are requests to do things. It’s also more intrusive than the forms of communication I prefer (blogs via RSS, and Twitter) – someone who has my email address can subscribe me to the mailing list for their latest project (grr), they can’t force their content into my Google Reader. The 140 character restriction on a Tweet forces a more to-the-point communication style. Scheduling things, despite the fact that I make my calendar accessible, is something of a nightmare.

    And – email is private. For some things, that is totally appropriate and I do love receiving emails from friends as it feels more personal than a Facebook wall post (even if I don’t demonstrate this with a prompt reply). However when I chat on sametime with one of my mentors, Sacha, it often seems to evolve into a blogpost for one, or both of us. Which is great – because then other people who weren’t part of the conversation can participate too and learn from what we’re sharing.

    Ultimately, I know I’m going to have to keep using email. I know I can find ways to manage it better – unsubscribe from things aggressively, get blog comments in my RSS reader instead, aggregate my accounts in gmail and use the filtering there.

    But – I’ll be honest – I’d probably prefer to hear from you by other means. But, before I sound too anti-social, obnoxious, and ungrateful… it’s really nice to hear from you at all. So if you loathe Twitter, email can be our compromise. Just don’t tell the people asking me for things.

    Mail
    Credit: xkcd