Accidentally in Code

Tag: email

  • Email

    spam spam spam
    Credit: flickr / Will Lion

    The other day I got an email from someone asking me to do something for them. They’d spelled my name wrong. This is someone who did a total of an hour volunteering for WISE and by being flaky had caused me a bunch of trouble.

    And so, I didn’t reply. There’s plenty of information about how to manage the information we receive, but how about what we send out? How about some guidelines.

    1. Check your spelling. If you’re asking for something and you spell my name wrong it gives a truly horrible impression. I know “Cate” is less common than “Kate” but it’s four letters, and if you managed to spell my email address there’s really no excuse.
    2. So you’re asking a question that you think I will know the answer to. There is, however, a minimum amount of time it will take me to read your email and craft a response. Say that’s 5 minutes, minimum, even if I don’t have to look up the answer for you. As such, I would say unless it’s going to take you 30 minutes or more to work it out, don’t email me. And don’t email me “just to check” something, either. Try it, and then if it doesn’t work, we’ll talk.
    3. Be concise. I talked to my students about “iPhone optimizing” their emails. I tend to monitor my email from my iPhone so if you want a prompt response, send me something short and to the point, that I can reply in 3 sentences or less.
    4. Consider the most appropriate way to contact. I use Twitter and SMS. It’s a better way to organize dinner or similar. Equally, rather than the back and forth you can always make a phone call.
    5. Don’t assume I check my email all the time. One, I check my email sporadically and can go for days deciding there’s nothing important enough to merit opening my mail client on my computer. Two, I resent it when people expect an instant response – instant response to email is a sign of disorganization. I’m trying to minimize my task switching, and get things done.

    I should mention though, I’m not currently returning phone calls I miss anymore. I tried to the other day, and ended up messaging some random guy who then tried to pick me up on the phone. Of course, after ascertaining I was 24. Urgh.

  • Facebook’s Got Your Mail

    Airmail envelope memo pocket book
    Credit: flickr / Kasaa

    It’s long been the case that in times of stress, I stop responding to email. Right now is a time of extreme stress (this week  I have to write a paper, mark an assignment, and have an interview) and I’ve stopped even reading it. I’m monitoring my iPhone for genuine emergencies, but if it doesn’t convey in the first line that it needs my attention now that’s it. No response. Sorry, I’ll read it next week – unless there’s something more important on. I haven’t checked Facebook in days, and this morning I though – I could just suspend my account. And then realized I couldn’t, because yesterday someone said to me:

    You’re on Facebook, right? Everyone’s on Facebook.

    And I’ve got something on Wednesday, which is still TBC… but I have someone on my Facebook – and don’t have their email address.

    I am, in effect, locked in to Facebook. Not because I myself depend on it, but because other people do.

    This is why we should be interested in Facebook’s Project Titan – a full featured web-mail. What I’d like it to have is IMAP, so I could just get my email from my email client, remove the Facebook app from my iPhone and probably disable my wall.

    However for the people who already use Facebook for most of their communication, what will the ability to, I don’t know, send attachments and email people not on Facebook bring?

    They won’t need a regular email address anymore.

    I know, this seems horrifying. But you know what? Some people still use Hotmail. I don’t just mean have a Hotmail account, I mean use it as their primary email. Like, they’d send a CV from it! Even though Microsoft took a bunch of features standard in every other (free!) email client out in a bid to make people pay for it. Now they’ll just use Facebook instead.

    For those of us who’d like to quit Facebook, but can’t, what will this mean? I think we may be even more locked in than we were before. It is notoriously difficult to delete your Facebook account and it’s not going to get any easier if our friends abandon email for FBmail.

    What do you think?

  • The Gap Between The Possible and My Imagination

    Balancing on the Invisible
    Credit: flickr / Dru!

    This is where I live. In this space between what I could achieve in a given day, or week, or month… and what in my imagination I’m capable of.

    Of course in my imagination I never kick back and watch a movie with my friend and a bottle of wine (honestly, this rarely happens in reality either… probably why I felt so horrible this morning). I never get burnt out from training hard and sleep for 10 hours straight. I never say “You know, I’m not having a great week but one thing I could control is my hair” and bunk off the things I should be doing to get a haircut. I never get so overwhelmed by “the list” that I have to take time to breathe deeply and try and decide what my priority one is. I never stare at the blank page where I’m supposed to be outlining the plan for my upcoming talk and feel completely and utterly uninspired. In my imagination, I don’t get things to nearly finished, get interrupted and struggle to come back to them.

    Other people don’t feature much in my imagination. Whilst I like working with others and I’m pretty social, there’s such a huge overhead and level of unpredictability when other people are involved. I struggle with this because it’s impossible to predict and hard to plan for. Because everyone manages their schedule and their list differently, it’s difficult to know when you should remind someone and when that would imply that they’re disorganized.

    I’m the same, as usual when I’m a little stressed out the first thing to go is my email. So if you’ve sent me something that is urgent, or very quick to reply to, you’ll probably have a response. If not – I’m going to level with you here – it could be a while. And so there will be a disconnect if someone has sent me something they perceive to be urgent, but didn’t seem that way to me.

    It’s not even February, but my inbox is out of control. I’m so behind on “the list” I can’t get a handle on what needs to be done anymore.

    What do I need? A couple of days by myself to pull myself and my organizational system together.

    I’m not going to get this.

    So what’s the alternative?

    Saying no.

    To the endless demands that show up in my inbox, I’m sorry but I’m at capacity right now. I expect to get back to you mid-February.

    To other things, too. What more can I eliminate? How can I better manage my interactions with others so that they are not time-sensitive? What’s the time commitment above which I should delegate (below which the delegation is more effort than I save)?

    Other people are better at this, and I keep finding myself in situations where they say no and it falls on me or a commitment is broken (as was the case this morning). I need to balance my need to be firmer, with the fact that I hate to let people down.

  • My Journal is Online

    WTJ 94 - Write a list of more ways to wreck this journal
    Credit: flickr / isazappy

    Now that my iPhone is unlocked (yay!) and has a data plan, I can play Foursquare. Which is exciting for me, but I know some people hate it and my boyfriend has been getting all angsty about giving up my privacy for nothing.

    The thing is though, I love tracking things. I track the applications I use, and the music I listen to. I track random things on Mycrocosm. I track my todo list through Remember the Milk and my goals page and I use various applications for tracking how I’m doing on Twitter (am I tweeting too much? Tweeting stuff that’s interesting?). I track my blog stats through Google Analytics which means I can say that when I added related posts to my blog, my bounce rate went down. I’m a bit of a data junkie, I guess. But that is probably fitting considering that to describe what I like to work on I’ve taken to saying, “I take data and try and present and organize it in a way such that I can answer questions that you didn’t think to ask.”

    Not everyone is interested in doing this, of course. But I’ve been thinking about why I like to document my life and track it online like this and I have an answer. And no, it’s not that I’m self-obsessed and want everyone to know exactly what I’m doing, all the goddamn time. It’s my way of keeping a journal – the journal I tried to keep at numerous points growing up, but never had the dedication to stick with. It’s easier! I track my music and application use just by running stuff in the background. My task lists are a little more arduous to maintain, but they can be updated anywhere and the payoff in terms of organization is well worth the time. Twitter allows me to keep track of funny or useful articles I find online and document the highlights of my days in snippets, now I archive my tweets into weekly blogposts for easier searching. My blog is a history of things I’ve thought about and worked on, it documents my ideas and is search-able, and sometimes I find things in the related posts section that I’ve forgotten I wrote.

    Now with Foursquare, I can keep track of where I’ve been. And I get that it’s annoying when your every check-in gets posted to your Twitter or Facebook stream, so I don’t do that. Currently it’s set to post only badges and mayorships, but I’ll turn that off if they’re frequent occurrences. Here’s what I’m getting out of it:

    Ambient Awareness

    I’m a big fan of this idea, I like the ease of keeping track of people and staying in touch this way, rather than the long “this is everything I’ve done in the last month” emails. And I suck at writing emails anyway (working on replying, I’m getting better at it), so nobody gets those from me. This makes it all the more useful to have places where people who are interested in what I’m up to but can’t be bothered to write the email and wait for the response can keep up with me, and hopefully I can keep up with them in return. If you’re not that person and my content is boring, I’m sorry – but it’s not meant for you. I tend to use Facebook for this, because it’s closed and I tend to limit it to people I know, but I think Foursquare can potentially be nice for that too.

    Serendipitous Meetings

    OK, this hasn’t happened yet but I hope it will. If I’m in Starbucks and you’re nearby and fancy a coffee then maybe you’ll come by and hang out. That’s kinda cool! And the other day when I was meeting friends at a restaurant, I knew one of them was there because his Foursquare check-in popped up on my phone. That’s potentially useful, too.

    Competition

    I really want to be Mayor of where I kickbox. Perhaps some people might find that a little sad, but if it gets me training more isn’t that a good thing? Competition encourages me to get out there, and visit new places. It’s pretty cold in Ottawa right now – the more motivation to get out and about, the better.

    How about you? Do you think Foursquare and services like that are stupid, or do you use them? And if so, why – what do you get out of it?

  • Scheduling at 80% of Capacity

    Lately, things have been somewhat chaotic. I don’t like it. It makes me stressed, overwhelmed, and unproductive.

    Credit: flikr / kevindooley
    Credit: flikr / kevindooley

    On Saturday, Treena and I headed out of town for breakfast and a chat. We caught up, and I was talking about how I had just hit this point where I was so overwhelmed I was having a hard time being productive. I’m trying to get a grip; I’ve managed to delegate something that was causing me a giant headache and I’ve been trying to do more things that make me happy rather than I feel I should do (this means I’ve finally caught up on this season of Ugly Betty – love that show).

    Credit flikr / flashcurd
    Credit flikr / flashcurd

    However, it’s not enough. At the end of the semester… I think the picture below captures it. It’s like when the snow melts and everything you’ve done all semester needs to be done and final. There’s a cascade of stress, as anything that takes longer than anticipated slides into everything else…

    Credit: flikr / mint imperial
    Credit: flikr / mint imperial

    Treena tells me (I’m paraphrasing here):

    In production, you always schedule at 80% of capacity just in case.

    I try to say that I do, it’s just more has gone wrong than the 20% allocated for. Maybe I’m right – I mean, over 4 hours a week spent on physio at the start of term… there’s 20% right there. Having to remark a whole assignment? That’s 20% and it’s happened twice.

    Then later, I think about it some more, and realize – I don’t know what my capacity is anymore. Some weeks I’ll work 80 hours and be OK with that. Last week I didn’t achieve anywhere near that (I tried to, but I was having terrible problems focusing). I’ve hit the point where my cup is overflowing – and not in a good way.

    Credit: flikr / 96dpi
    Credit: flikr / 96dpi

    So Treena is right – I’ve not been scheduling at 80% of capacity. The fact that I don’t even know what my capacity is anymore, tells me I’ve really screwed things up – I’ve sprinted and crashed. I need to be doing 50 hours every week, not 80 hours one week and 20 the next. I shouldn’t be at the point where what needs to happen this week makes me want to curl into a ball and cry.

    Credit: flikr / hufse
    Credit: flikr / hufse

    It’s probably too late for this semester. If I can get through this week, it’s over. For next semester, what can I do to learn what my 80% is and schedule for that?

    • Working Saturdays – don’t do it. Saturday lunchtime labs screw up my whole weekend, they’ve often overran as well as assignments have been due on Sundays and I feel compelled to stay longer to help.
    • TA-ing period. No TA-ing in French (it’s much more stressful for me), and if I TA at all it will be a “proper” CS course as the obligatory courses for non-CS students are much harder.
    • Delegate before it’s panicking me. I arranged for someone to take charge of something last week that I probably should have arranged a month ago.
    • Better sleep schedule. I was up early for the first chunk of the semester, but then I work late into the evening and it spills over to the following day when I sleep late… need to avoid this and keep on a more regular schedule – especially since the morning is often my most productive time.
    • Do things that make me happy. Read more novels. Go do things I enjoy. Spend time with my boyfriend. I’m 24 – it’s too young to do nothing but work.
    • Email. Takes too much time. Unsubscribe from everything I can. This will include Twitter notifications. I should make a custom Twitter landing page indicating that I don’t check the notifications and that I mostly follow back people who talk to me, so send me an @ message saying hello. Once the end of the semester is over (no more panicked emails from students) I should be able to check it just once a day. Try and move to inbox zero.
    • Courses. Take a course that I enjoy and am interested in. This semester’s course was one I had to take, which definitely made me less motivated. That kind of workload in something I’m more passionate about would not be as big a problem. Spend more time at the beginning of the semester going to a few courses and picking the one that I will enjoy most – this will pay off later.
    • Some tasks get bigger the longer you put them off. Last week, I spent several hours trying to clear my email. On my desk, there’s a pile of paper 6 inches high. At this point, they become so large I need to set aside a lot of time to deal with them. This makes them much more intimidating, and I put them off even longer… it’s a vicious cycle. Try not to get into it in the first place.

    This is everything I can think of for now, but as I try to find my 80% no doubt more will come up. How about you? How do you find your 80%?

  • Email

    Since I started using Remember the Milk my task list is now separate from my email – so email that I mark as “ToDo” items don’t show up in it unless I put them there. I’ve opted not to, and instead made a recurring task every other day to “clear email”.

    As a result of this, I’ve discovered two things: 1. not having it on my list means I do other things instead, which is good – clearing my email in one go should be more efficient. 2. I dread doing this task.

    Perhaps the thing is, that the people I want to talk to I am talking to – on Twitter, or Facebook, or Wave. So the emails I get are mostly tedious things that I need to attend to for someone else’s benefit. Except that one, and er, that one. And yours if you’re waiting a response from me.

    I wonder if with real-time or near real-time communication I’m just getting to the point when something so asynchronous seems weird. I mean, if someone doesn’t respond to a Twitter message within 2 days, that’s it right? You don’t expect a response.

    What’s bothering me? Too many services? To much mail, period?

    I remember when getting a letter in the post from a friend was exciting. But now only getting a package is exciting, because letters consist of bills and things trying to get you to buy insurance or whatever. I wonder if I’m starting to see e-mail in a similar way. E-mails mostly consist of people asking me to do stuff, and spam.

    Hmm.

  • How Web 2.0 is Changing the Way we Communicate

    How Web 2.0 is Changing the Way we Communicate

    How Web 2.0 is Changing the Way we Communicate

     

    How Web 2.0 is Changing the Way we Communicate

    This is what I’ve been finding in my research – what do you think? Anything missing?