Recap: Overload and the interrupt-driven lifestyle

Clive’s excellent article from Sunday’s New York Times Magazine (previously) has brought us a lot of new folks looking for ways to adapt to the overloaded, always-on, interrupt-driven world in which most of us are living. So, I’ve bubbled up a few older entries on these topics that you might find useful:

• Five fast email productivity tips - Five no-brainers that I’ve seen help a lot of folks. #1: Set your email program’s auto check to no more often than once per hour. That’s right, Mr. Indispensable, you heard me: one hour.
• Harnessing your interstitial time - Capitalize on change by planning small and watching for unexpected bits of time that you can liberate and put to good use. What tasks can fit through the narrow windows of time that are available to you?
• Impressive paper-based project management workflow - This fascinating “kanban“-inspired system includes built-in stops to ensure 1) we only work on one task at a time and that, 2) only so much can be “current” at a given time.
• Incomplete tasks and the Zeigarnik Effect - The Zeigarnik effect states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones.
• Want to keep surfing? Pay the Webolodeon - Danny’s Greasemonkey script bugs you every few minutes to see if you really still need to be surfing the web.
• Mental dialogues, yak-shaving & the triumph of the “mini-review”? - Give yourself 10 or 15 minutes to review your work and see if it really squares with your goals. Are you shaving an unnecessary yak?
• On the culture of distraction; one pipe for all interruptions? - Pointing to a really good article on the problems and implications of the interruption-driven lifestyle. Full of good bits. Also an idea for an API that lets us decide the when and what of breaking our attention.
• Tips on maintaining concentration - Tips that are useful way beyond studying—really for any kind of work that requires your mind not to wander off on its own.
• Stever Robbins on email overload - Article on dealing with high email volume that focuses on what you can do to craft email messages that are easy to process, read, and answer.