working

Google Docs Adds Over 300 New Templates

Merlin — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:57:46 -0400

Google Docs recently added over 300 templates for a variety of business documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Need templates for a calendar, a letter, a resume, or even Avery-compatible labels? You're good to go.

My favorites are in the eclectic "Miscellaneous" section, where you'll find templates for athletes, parents, wedding or event planners, wine nerds, screenwriters -- even "animal guardians".

Cool new resource and a neat idea. Yet another reason for MS Office to keep an eye on its dwindling lunch.

I'm looking forward to spending some time with these, because I'm a huge GDocs nerd. Can't wait until you can edit Google Documents via your iPhone. That's when the game really changes.

”Google Docs Adds Over 300 New Templates” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 17, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Ira Glass on Working Through the Suck

Merlin — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:37:16 -0400

YouTube - Ira Glass on Storytelling #3

Video featuring terrific advice from This American Life’s Ira Glass on having the tenacity to get better at the creative work you’re passionate about — even through the times when you know what you’re making isn't as good as you'd like.

I admire Ira's courageousness in using himself as an example of how to do it wrong.

(Also, now that I’m aware of that tic where radio people punch every third word, I’m hearing it all the time.)

[via Big Contrarian]

”Ira Glass on Working Through the Suck” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 07, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

NYT: Businesses Fight the Email Monster They Helped Create

Merlin — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 14:24:46 -0400

Lost in E-Mail, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast - NYTimes.com

Is Information Overload a Billion Drag on the Economy? - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

If you've seen the video of my Inbox Zero talk at Google, you may recall the moment when a few attendees start mentioning the hundreds of internal email messages they receive (and send) in a given day. I still remember, because I almost fainted.

Whenever I hear these and similar stories, the same question always comes to mind: "What does a company get out of its employees spending half their day using an email program?" Well, apparently, it's a question a lot of people are starting to ask. Including Google.

A story in today's New York Times covers Sili Valley's new interest in curbing unnecessary interruptions and helping stem the flow of endless data.

Intel and other companies are already experimenting with solutions. Small units at some companies are encouraging workers to check e-mail messages less frequently, to send group messages more judiciously and to avoid letting the drumbeat of digital missives constantly shake up and reorder to-do lists.

A Google software engineer last week introduced E-Mail Addict, an experimental feature for the company’s e-mail service that lets people cut themselves off from their in-boxes for 15 minutes.

A few more stats for you:

A typical information worker who sits at a computer all day turns to his e-mail program more than 50 times and uses instant messaging 77 times...

I'd also draw your attention to this infographic illustrating data points from recent studies on "workers' efficiency at information-intensive businesses." 28% of a typical worker's day is spent on:

Interruptions by things that aren't urgent or important, like unnecessary e-mail messages -- and the time it takes to get back on track.

Sidenote: According to that same graphic, 20% of an average day is spent on meetings. Wow. Expressed as a year, that means a meeting you start on New Year's day would let out around the middle of March. Yikes.

Sounds like these folks have their work cut out for them.

I think it's important to clarify something here: there's nothing fundamentally wrong or irreparable about email as a tool. Given my position on how email gets (ab)used, you could be forgiven for thinking I want everyone to write each other letters once a year and ride cows to work. No. Not at all.

My point has always been that, as with any tool, email can be used for good or ill depending on the problems you've decided it can solve. One trouble is that our use and widespread adoption of email hasn't brought with it an equally widely-adopted understanding about how to use it, what content it's appropriate for, and what expectations we accept regarding when it's allowed to take us away from everything in our life that's not email. There are very few shared rules of the road right now. And that's making life hard for a lot of people.

I'm thrilled to hear that these ideas are bubbling up and getting the attention they deserve; email pain is usually a quiet, lonely, and shameful one, where people's work and home life suffer from the silent understanding that "too much is never enough" -- that trying to tamp down this always-on hysteria is a sign of weakness or sloth. That's ironic, given the biggest reason we reason use email so much: it's easy.

There's no cashier, editor, or therapist through which your message must pass. You set your own rules for what's appropriate to send, ask, or demand. You decide what it means when someone reacts (or doesn't react) in a given manner or time frame. Email is still the Wild West, and companies are paying billions of dollars a year to supply the six-shooters and Stetsons. Yeehaw.

I'll keep following these stories, because, I must tell you, I think it's going to be a rocky road for businesses to patch. Will whacky experiments like "No Email Fridays" have an affect on how we think about this medium? Only as much as "No Ice Cream Sundays" can help fix your eating disorder.

But, I'm glad they're trying, and I'm really glad the conversation has started at a higher level.

As for the decision-makers who are struggling with this stuff: these stats are great for getting companies off the bubble, but before you start breaking crockery, I suggest talking to lots of real employees about how they work, how they communicate, and how they might be able to help you.

Every time I speak to a company, I hear half a dozen depressing stories of management disconnection and communication bedlam, alongside one or two completely inspiring tales about how employees and small teams are working to fix things at a squad or platoon level. It's really amazing, and I wish it were something C-levels and managers were more cognizant of.

So, I suggest you be open to seeing email as just one tool among many, and be gracious about listening to those teams about how they've worked to fix or ameliorate these problems.

Bottom line (and I'll never stop saying this): stop trying to eradicate human communication problems by introducing waves of new technology or made-up rules of social engineering. A company with email problems is also experiencing people problems. Until you understand why the wetware isn't working like you'd expected, don't go nuts with top-down technology solutions and over-clever edicts.

There's a million tiny ways to improve how a business communicates with itself, and a lot of that intelligence is currently trapped, unmined, in the heads of people who've never been asked for an opinion. I like to think articles like this represent every knowledge worker's opportunity to raise his or her hand and say, "Hey, I have an idea."

[NYT links via Mrs. Mann]

”NYT: Businesses Fight the Email Monster They Helped Create” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on June 14, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Topless meetings for team focus?

Merlin — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:04:54 -0400

When it's hard to stay focused, try going 'topless' to meetings - San Jose Mercury News

Our good pals over at Adaptive Path have been experimenting with banning laptops and other communication devices in meetings (something I've supported in the past). From today's Mercury News:

Frustrated by distracted workers so plugged in that they tune out in the middle of business meetings, a growing number of companies are going "topless," as in no laptops allowed. Also banned from some conference rooms: BlackBerrys, iPhones and other personal devices on which so many have come to depend...

But as laptops have gotten lighter and smart-phones even smarter, people have discovered a handy diversion, making more eye contact these days with their screens than one another. The practice became so pervasive that Todd Wilkens turned to his company blog to wage his "personal war against CrackBerry..."

His San Francisco design firm, Adaptive Path, now strongly encourages everyone to leave their laptops at their desks. His colleague, Dan Saffer, coined the term "topless" as in "laptop-less." Also booted are mobile and smart-phones, which must be stowed on a counter or in a box during meetings. It took some convincing, but soon people began connecting with one another rather than with their computers, Wilkens said.

"All of our meetings got a lot more productive," he said.

[via Dan Saffer]

The Question to You

Has your team tried some version of topless meetings? How did it work for you? Anybody tried it and given up? How did the meetings change without the toys being on?

”Topless meetings for team focus?” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 25, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Vox Pop: Patterns for email as work conversation?

Merlin — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 10:10:33 -0400

Inbox Zero is a system and philosophy that most benefits people who are overwhelmed by a high-volume of mystery meat email. The system works because it's stupid-simple, and the real art comes out of getting fast and ruthless at identifying requests for your time and attention that must be acknowledged or completed vs. the vast majority of stuff that needs very light attention (or can just get deleted).

But, not so fast -- what if, instead, you're receiving a high volume of easily identifiable messages? And what if your main "action" is reading, digesting, and then contributing? That's a bit trickier, as I have learned.

Every time I give the Inbox Zero talk to a tech-heavy group -- and most especially when I talk with engineers -- there's pushback on a couple issues. First, a lot of techies say they love it when everything gets routed through email, and second, they think an Inbox-Zero-type methodology isn't particularly useful for the type of communication that they get all day long. And that's conversations. Lots of conversations.

For many tech folks, email is the ideal and preferred way to avoid meetings and pointless flights. It's where they discuss features, debate implementation, and argue over the best solution to a problem. And that's how they like it. Some companies I visit with tell me they take pride in generating over 1000 person-messages each day. That's their culture, and love it or leave it.

This doesn't mean there's not room for improvement, but of course it's a valid and very real way to work.

Do stay tuned after the jump for your chance to join the conversation with comments and tips for managing conversational email, but first here's my observations on a few patterns that seem to work for a high volume of conversation based email:

Threading - you benefit greatly from an email app that lets you view messages grouped by conversation. This makes it easy to focus on one discussion as well as leap ahead as needed without distratction
Processing - Regardless of your style, I think it's still very valuable to process to zero on a regular basis, pulling out all the non-conversational emails that can be converted to action or immediately deleted. (more on processing email)
Filtering - It still seems valuable to identify lists and conversations that need less attention (or just don't need attention right now) so that you can keep them from grabbing you away from the nitty gritty. (more on filtering email)
Standards (esp. on subject and quoting) - Having a "house style" that your team agrees to use for subject lines and quoting will save you much heartache. If you've ever had to catch up on the latest additions to a three-week-old, high-volume thread, you'll instantly know whether everyone was on the same page.
Muting - I love mute functionality like that found in GMail. Basically, this let's you say "this is a conversation I don't need to follow any more," and new messages in the thread are archived automatically
Save and Search - Short, attachment-free, well-quoted messages make archiving and search a less-than-typical pain, so you can feel fine about saving old messages for as long as they remian useful to you. Then you can just pull them up via search as needed for historical purposes.

The Question to You

If your job requires you to keep up with a very high-volume of conversation email, please share your favorite tricks. Is the high-volume list-based system working for you? What helps you keep on top of things? What bits of Inbox Zero do and don’t help? If you could change one thing about the way your team handles email conversations today, what would it be?

”Vox Pop: Patterns for email as work conversation?” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 12, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

A Day Unplugged: Frenzied Blackberries vs. Kwai Chang Caine?

Merlin — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 09:42:21 -0500

I Need a Virtual Break. No, Really. - New York Times

In yesterday's New York Times, Mark Bittman wrote an entertaining and thoughtful article about realizing that his need to stay wired, in-touch, and updated was really starting to eat into him. His headslap moment came on an international flight, as he realizes "the only other place I could escape was in my sleep." He goes on to talk about the difficulty of maintaining even a single day of "Sabbath" from electronic communication and media:

I woke up nervous, eager for my laptop. That forbidden, I reached for the phone. No, not that either. Send a text message? No. I quickly realized that I was feeling the same way I do when the electricity goes out and, finding one appliance nonfunctional, I go immediately to the next. I was jumpy, twitchy, uneven.

But, eventually, he settles in and starts to enjoy things that would never appear on his radar screen on a wired day:

I drank herb tea (caffeine was not helpful) and stared out the window. I tried to allow myself to be less purposeful, not to care what was piling up in my personal cyberspace, and not to think about how busy I was going to be the next morning. I cooked, then went to bed, and read some more.

GRADUALLY, over this and the next couple of weekends — one of which stretched from Friday night until Monday morning, like the old days — I adapted.

Eventually (natch), he returns to the wired world. So it goes.

I liked that this piece was written from a personal perspective, which, to my mind, is the best (and, often, only) place to start any kind of experiment around hacking time and attention. And, I do really like the idea of periodically accepting (enforcing?) days without media and wires. Truly, you'll never realize how difficult this can be until you really make it happen. But, as Bittman notes, once you get over the initial crash, you can see a striking contrast in what your life could look like. Good stuff.

But, like a lot of pieces on wired overstimulation, this one comes close to conflating the axis of "work" with the axis of "electronic media." Which, in my opinion, is an unwholesome confusion to abide, even just in appearance -- especially since it could be seen as blaming inert matter for our problems, while allowing us addicts (and the culture we've permitted ourselves to grow accustomed to) to get off way too easy.

J'accuse!

Let's be brutally honest, here -- I can "work" at my computer for 10 hours and do nothing but dick around with Wikipedia and YouTube. Heck, even if I do "work stuff" like email and "research," I can easily trail off in a hundred directions that have nothing to do with my initial task. Is that the fault of the computer and the internet? Maybe, kinda. But, no more so than I can reasonably blame this crappy hammer for that awkward birdhouse I built. Stupid hammer.

So, let's start by admitting that one reason we spend so much time in front of a screen (or hooked up to an iPod or SMSing on the phone or updating Twitter) is simply because we can. Because it's fun. And because it's easy. It makes us feel...connected. Is it the fault solely of "my job" that I have to sit here all day? For me: I'm going to say a resounding no.

Okay, then, so what happens when I go off the grid?

From printer paper to rice paper

Well, first, does it strike anyone else as funny that -- notwithstanding Bittman's desire not to get too "new-agey" -- the main alternative to stressful, wired work appears to be acting like a monk on Kung Fu? I mean, I wonder if it says anything about us that our first response to unhooking (after initial panic) is to pretend it's the 19th century and all we can do is read scrolls, meditate, or walk amongst the trees.

For myself -- once I've had my cup of green tea and carried a cauldron of hot coals with my forearms -- I find there are lots of work-related things I can do without a computer, phone, or internet. Really good and valuable stuff that I tend to forget about or ignore when I'm powered up. Stuff like longhand writing, cleaning out old files, or just making my work area a more pleasant place to be.

I'm not disagreeing with this fine article in any substantial way -- I mean, it's not hard to sell me on the idea that we allow ourselves to be overstimulated, or that it's hard to stop. But, I do think it's very important to be frank about what parts of our problem come from the hammer versus which parts come from our own hands. I think Bittman clearly gets that, but I'd hate for this article to just land on the CEO's desk in the pile titled "The Internet's Killing 'The Enterprise!'"

And, speaking of 'The Enterprise'

So: vaguely (but mostly not) related. Whenever a company proudly announces "No Email Fridays!" I just want to groan, wad up my David Carradine poster, and throw it across the dojo. Because, while I'm sure this kind of rule (or policy or experiment) is well-intentioned, it's about as employee-friendly as ankle weights and morning jumping-jacks.

Email is not the problem, America. The culture around email (and phones and meetings and SMS) is the real culprit. And we're not going to change perverse electronic culture by nailing theses to a door or by social-engineering the crap out of our employees. Plus, I'll just bet you, dimes to donuts, that "no-Friday-email" companies also breed a species of employee who spends most of Saturday making up for the lost time. (Instead of hanging with family or practicing having spears thrown at him by the other Shaolins)

I'd say that if we need anything "enforced" across a company it's periodic, rolling breaks from being accessible to everybody; to create an environment where everyone in the group or company knows the time and day when they will simply be uninterruptible, without exception, consequence, or need for excuse. That's their time to do with as they please.

Now, is this a distinction without a difference from just shutting off email? No way. For one, that email still piles up (even over the eight hours you're commanded to ignore it). And what's to prevent that Friday from being the day someone decides to just hand-deliver all their demands to my cube? What about meetings? And can we still call each other on the phone? Where's the real break? Sane and firewalled time -- yes, even to process email -- is what people really need to have and depend upon.

I'd say the company that wants to solve the "too much connectedness" problem would do well not just to focus on the easy solutions that involve masking symptoms. To really get closer to the root cause, it'll require a much more profound rethinking of a culture that's still 20 years behind the technology it supports.

And that ain't gonna happen with a memo and an "email-free" Friday.

It's not you; it's us

On a personal level, accepting these kinds of radical fasts can be a terrific way to detox or to just reconnect with a world that's further than arm's reach from your keyboard. And it reminds us that (apparently) there are alternative approaches to a morning that don't involve a mouse or a keypad. This is all awesome -- even indispensable. But let's not be lulled into thinking that the medium is always the murderer.

So, yes: take time off from electronics and media, and take time off from work. But, be mindful about which is which -- as well as which it is that you really need the break from. For most of us, the answer is an unequivocal "both!"

And, finally, is it conceivable that what you really need the break from is new demands on your time? What does solving that problem look like? And can it really be accomplished simply by unplugging a few things for a day or two? (My guess: no, it's actually a lot more complicated than that.)

Me? I just want to inch toward a place where I get the problem enough that I can stop work for an hour to enjoy my iPod just as easily as I can take 10 minutes and a legal pad to draft a dull report under a tree. It's ultimately how we'll snatch the pebble, Grasshopper.

”A Day Unplugged: Frenzied Blackberries vs. Kwai Chang Caine?” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 03, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"