[…] GTD, DIY & Productivity David Allen Interview: Getting Things Done with Email - 43Folders […]

When someone is tailgating me on the road, I slow down so that they are forced to keep a safer distance (3 feet at 10 mph is much safer, for example, than 3 feet at 60 mph). Similarly, when someone is pushy for quick responses, I sloooooow dooooown, minimizing their expectations. I usually get back to most people in a flash, but when it’s expected? Forget it. Unless, of course, it is an urgent matter.

In the junior high where I teach, we are expected to check our snail mail in the morning and once during the day. I think email should be treated similarly. Like Craig said, if it’s an emergency, they should try you by telephone.

Where’s my soapbox. Here. Okay, my thoughts:

If you expect an instant response to an email message you send, you do not understand the whole point of asynchronous communications.

You should also think about using a telephone.

If you respond to emails instantly because you want to meet this expectation, you are an enabler.

These podcasts are great. Hopefully you will release the whole thing together at some point.

I better go check my email.

Sandy Weill, the recently retired chief of Citigroup, didn’t even use email, but somehow managed to run a financial empire. (For good or bad is another issue.) Yes, he had minions catering to his needs, but by opting out of email, he was tacitly saying that the inbox was not the sum total of his work existence. And yes, as the big cheese, he could call anyone in the organization and get an immediate response, but nevertheless, he allowed himself the luxury of THINKING, rather than simply responding.

80%? 90%? 99%? of the time, people don’t need an immediate response. They need a predictable response — say, within 30 minutes or an hour. Organizations (or groups within organizations) need to begin this conversation, and recognize that just because we can send a message instantaneously doesn’t mean that we have to respond instantaneously.

Multi-tasking frustrates me to no end. On my last project I found that I would be reviewing a document, then bounce to my email inbox (upon notification of a new message), and then all of a sudden I would get IM’d with a question. Invariably, my concentration was lost and I completely forgot what I was originally working on! At the end of the day this undermined my productivity. The problem was that the tools were controlling me, instead of the other way around. Now I only periodically check my email and likewise if I get an instant message, I don’t respond to it until I am ready. It’s good to be in control!

[…] I was listening to an interview Merlin Mann did with David Allen (creator of “Getting Things Done”) about email management, and I’ve gotta tell you, it may have changed my life. […]

[…] You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Make aComment […]

Thank you. I never thought about archiving my Gmail until now. It feels good to be at zero.

Did anyone have a problem downloading the MP3? When I did it using the “Save as” feature, it only ran 2:15, with Dave’s voice fading out suddenly. If I had interrupted the download, it wouldn’t have saved.

That was freakin’ insightful, I really enjoyed it.

I think I noticed a bug: the Odeo player seemed to tail at 10:22, even tho the actual podcast is several minutes longer than that.

Also, the text in this comment entry box is really, really small! Can you please consider making it larger?

BTW, I CRACKED UP SO HARD AT MERLIN’S MENTION OF WATERMELON!

I love watermelon so much (see my website for why)… not sure I’d lug one everywhere as a lifestyle PDA, but it’d be useful if I got lost in the desert and needed to drink something. :)

[…] Als ich dann tiefer eingestiegen bin, halfen mir die Links zu David Allen wie insbesondere zu Merlin Mann, der auf seinem 43 folders Blog eine Fülle von Ideen bereit hält. Btw. zu dem Thema wie man mit E-mails umgeht gibt es aktuell gerade eine ca. 7 minütiges Interview zwischen David Allen und Merlin Mann. […]

[…] David Allen Interview: Getting Things Done With Email. […]

I suck rocks when it comes to personal e-mail. I get so overwhelmed with the amount of spam that comes through that I can barely function. I get to zero by selecting everything in my inbox and hitting delete.

[…] Productivity, Career & Personal Development 8 Golden Rules to Develop and Design Quickly Tips for becoming a more effective developer David Allen Interview: Getting Things Done with Email Implementing a Methodology Avoid These 10 Interview Bloopers […]

The de facto standard that seems to exist in my little corner of the world is that if it’s time-critical, you ring, if it’s not, you email. And if it’s something that requires a more back-and-forth, collaborative type interaction it gets taken to IM.

Email (still?) seems to be sufficiently “heavy” that the five-minute response is not an expectation.

Of course there are always those damn extroverts who insist on ringing about everything, but one tries to make allowances for their tragic psychological condition.

Favorite David point: when he says that GTD ought to exacerbate things that are not working. Merlin point: “the short order cook is not collecting slips of paper, he is cooking meals.” I also like the coinage “zenslap”.

David Allen’s persona in conversation with Merlin is much sharper than his voice on the audiobook of Ready For Anything. Good stuff!

[…] read more | digg story […]

[…] I also listened to an interesting discussion by Getting Things Done guru David Allen on a podcast here: […]

Merlin,

Since switching over to David’s email processing system as a part of GTD, my inbox stays empty and my stress level has dropped exponentially. It IS possible if you utilize the @Action, @Referce, etc..options. Sometimes, the only thing I might have a hard time doing is clearing out old reference items just to keep my boxes low.

Also, I’ve recently switched over to GTDGmail, available as an extension to those running the FireFox web browser for my management system and it’s an awesome extension. Keeping things in their proper contexts and doing custom searches to organize my action list is outstanding. It even custom prints HipSter PDA cards to take with you on the go, which I do everyday to add to my “stack”.

Thanks for the interviews…these have been awesome!

What about for those of us where email is not only the primary form of communication, but really the way we do our work. That is as a freelance web developer all my work comes in through email and goes out through email. It’s not so much noise surrounding my work but the work itself. I get photoshop files, feature requests, changes, modifications etc through email so processing that email is my work essentially.

I tend to live out of my inbox, it is my todo list basically and it doesn’t feel like there are very good tools for dealing with it in this manner and shifting it to another program or another context doesn’t really make a lot of sense. WHat’s really needed is a very smart way of leveraing email into your workflow a bit better. The idea that the new Mac Leopard OS is going to have To Do’s integrated into email is exciting but what to do till then?

Thoughts? Ideas?

This was an interesting discussion. DA is clearly concerned that his theories not be used to further the culture of finger-pointing. MM couldn’t get him to budge off point. It’s a fine point, but an obvious one: my company makes money off sales not me keeping my in-box empty. However I can increase sales, that’s up to me.

After a year and a half at my current job, I can finally and consistently keep my in-box at zero, but only becaue I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out what they all mean. I’ve had to go through several systems, each progressing from the previous, designed to increase my understanding of both the inputs and my relationship to them. My current process wouldn’t have worked for me a year ago.

It seems to me that David squarely focuses on that relationship, rather than on process. His previous statement, that administrators are basically people who hold buckets and run after other people, hit me square between the eyes. It helped me to understand that I do GTD because others can’t or won’t. I don’t dare pay too much attention to processes; I have to pay close attention so that I don’t break my ankle tripping over my co-workers piles of stuff.

You have to be able to view your circumstance from a half-dozen altitudes at once, and you have to come to terms with the fact that it’ll never look good from all altitutes at once. When too many views look bad, it’s time to move on.

First thought: does my boss understand ‘computers’? Second thought: my boss may understand I want to work on the efficency email usage within our organisation. But, does he understand how important this is? Or could become?

[…] David Allen Interview: Getting Things Done with Email | 43 Folders (tags: email gtd productivity timemanagement tiplicious) […]