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. ↑
- 31 Jan 07
- flow, howto, instant messaging, kevin cheng, lifeclever, organization, productivity
