unraveled

January 2007 Archive

Productivity Three Part 2: Instant Messaging

This is part 2 of 3. Read Part 1: Email.

When used appropriately, instant messaging can be an excellent productivity tool. And it has gained more respect after a recent study showed its advantages over email when exchanging ideas. However, one of the biggest complaints about instant messaging is the attention it seems to demand. Many will agree that IM can be one of the great time sinks — especially in the workplace — but not many have any good solutions for this beyond recommending that you simply turn it off.

Last year, LifeClever suggested that you group your IM buddies by how frequently you talk to them. This is an good start, but I think it misses the point: it’s not about how frequently you talk to people; it’s about how important they are to you right now. If someone is important to you, you’re often likely to talk to them frequently. Vice versa if they’re not important to you. But sometimes there’s someone who I don’t talk to frequently who suddenly becomes more important, for example, because I’m working with them on a project. In this case, moving them to a group called Frequent doesn’t make much sense. Instead, I move them to a group called Alpha — as in “most important”.

To start using this system, separate your buddy list into three groups divided by importance. My groups are called Alpha, Beta and Gamma. (You can call yours Really, Some and Little if you like — whatever has meaning to you.) People in Alpha get my attention the most, those in Beta get my attention less and those in Gamma get it the least. I find this not only helps me to keep people organized in my mind, but it also helps me to control how IM diverts my attention and pull me out of my flow [1]. If I’m hard at work, and someone who’s in the Gamma group pings me — I don’t care who they are — they’ll be hard pressed to get a response soon. (Contrary to many opinions, instant messaging doesn’t imply instant response.) But if it’s someone from Alpha, they’re more likely to get a response in the next few minutes. In other words, Alpha is reserved for high priority, important contacts.

(This system is based on ideas from Kevin Cheng and LifeClever.)

The series continues with Productivity Three Part 3: RSS.

[1] Flow, which I briefly mentioned in part 1, has gained a lot of attention recently, and I’m keenly interested in the concept so expect more on it in an upcoming post. ↑

Google Image Search Redesign

If you, like me, are disappointed with Google’s recent Image Search “redesign”, you may be interested in my Google Image Search redesign exercise:

Like Google Web Search, Google Image Search remained relatively unchanged since its inception, until a few days ago when they “redesigned” and hid most of the useful information that was displayed alongside images. Image Search results now show only the thumbnail and a short contextual snippet for each result. To get the file size, dimensions, format and domain, you have to mouse over the image.

Meanwhile, tagging is quickly becoming a standard for image findability, image recognition technology has drastically improved, and the web audience is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Google is also expanding other products such as Google News and Picasa, services rich in images that can be integrated into image search results. And Google redesigns by hiding useful information. My question for Google is simple: why so lame?

Have a look: Google Image Search Redesign

Productivity Three Part 1: Email

Email, instant messaging, RSS. Who has time for it all? You do. The better question is: who has time to keep up with email, instant messaging and RSS while maintaining a productive work life? In this three part series, I’ll be sharing the basic techniques I use to improve my efficiency and productivity with these three mediums. While the techniques I discuss work well for me, I can’t guarantee that they’ll work just as well for you. But I hope that some readers find them useful and integrate them into their own workflow. As with all of my articles, I welcome your feedback and look forward to reading about the techniques you use to manage your email, instant messaging and RSS.

Part 1: Email

I received some positive feedback from readers who started using email organization with one folder. (For those new to this system, it allows you to organize and process your email with only one additional folder.) However, one issue that has come up more than once is how to quickly find archived messages when they’re all mixed together in the same folder. Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet that will instantly make all your archived messages findable, but you can make newly archived messages easier to find using tags.

Other common email issues I’ve observed regardless of the workflow and organization system used are the frequency that one checks their email and the notorious email notification.

Several people have complained to me about how email is too much of a distraction. The first question I always ask is how often does their software check for new messages? This answer is typically 15 minutes or less, and sometimes every five minutes. The second question I ask is how do they know when they have new messages? The answer to this question is usually “I get a desktop alert” or “It makes a sound”. In each of these questions, the answer doesn’t have anything to do with email itself, but how much attention you choose to give it or how much attention you allow it to steal. In each case, you can choose to control your attention or you can give it up to email.

Taking my original system into consideration, along with the new goals of improved findability and reduced distractions, here is my current three point system for improving email productivity.

  1. Organize. Follow the system outlined in email organization with one folder to process and organize incoming messages.
  2. Tag. Tag new and archived messages for easier findability.
  3. Stay in flow. Don’t check for new messages more than once an hour and turn off all notifications which actively distract you from your flow.

Step 2 can be done several ways depending on your email client. For Apple Mail, I recommend the excellent Mail Tags. It’s still in beta, but it’s very stable and regularly updated. Microsoft Outlook users don’t have any options that work quite as well as Mail Tags, but there are a few. The first is the somewhat clunky Taglocity. The second is the better designed, but currently in closed beta SideFinder. Finally, if you prefer the low tech solution, you can always ‘tag’ messages by changing the subject line.

This series continues with Productivity Three Part 2: Instant Messaging.

← December 2006 | Archives | February 2007 →