Inbox Zero

Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now) - Vimeo [NSFW]

Here’s a video I made about a video I made. Consequently, it’s also about writing a book, fake self-help, the long road to developing expertise, and the ups and downs of repeatedly asking the world to tell you who you are.

The video is long. As usual. This is how it works.

Real Estate Connect San Francisco 2008 | Inman News

Later this morning, I’m honored to be delivering the keynote address at the Inman Real Estate Connect conference here in San Francisco – coincidentally, a conference I attended in 2000 as the “Senior Producer” (whatever that means) for the real estate dotcom I was working for.

I’ll be doing my Inbox Zero talk and touching on some of the ways that real estate agents can use the system in their go-go, always-on sales environment.

There are several new slides in today’s deck that I’ll be premiering with this version of the talk – the one above reflects something I’ve been returning to a lot lately in helping people to spend less time fiddling with their messages: stop obsessing about “organizing” your email.

I was recently put in charge of on-site tech services after a two year apprenticeship as the assistant. Surveying the mess left to me by my former boss, I’m amazed at how many open projects he allowed to grind to a dead stop on his watch. I suppose it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Bloated from the effects of rapid growth, my company suffers from years of rampant position-creation and ill-considered solution grafts. Left to grapple with a culture of contradictory goals, incomplete training and an end-to-end process similar to Sartre’s “No Exit” (“hell is other departments”), I’m surprised my predecessor got anything done at all.