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:  read more »

Need lens-buying advice from Canon photography nerds.

The Mrs. and Me are starting to really dig taking photos again — she with a Rebel XT and me with a 30D. We currently share joint custody of 1) the XT’s standard 18-55mm zoom (blech) and 2) the glorious and much-loved 50mm f1.4 (yay!).  read more »

I have a lot of trouble keeping track of what I'm supposed to be doing. It's not that I necessarily have trouble prioritizing my tasks or scheduling things - I mean I do, but that's not the main problem.

The main problem is that I've got too many things I really need (want) to do - too many long-term projects with potential - and I'm never exactly sure when they're a few weeks away from a grand payoff and when they're just wasting my time.

I suppose this is a crisis of faith.  read more »

In comments about yesterday’s “Making friends with paper” post, I was reminded by 43f member Adam Hooks…

A couple months ago, on a MBW episode, Merlin, you recommended some scanner/pdf solutions and you said you would elaborate on that on 43f at some point. I thought this was related to reducing your reliance on paper. How did your scanning experiment go?

Adam remembers correctly that I purchased and preliminarily fiddled with the Fujitsu ScanSnap S500M for OS X (Info, Amazon). It’s a small-footprint, high-speed document scanner that a lot of people have been talking about lately. I’d read so many reviews and blog posts about how easy it is to use that I was intoxicated by the dream of a life — if not without paper storage — where I could at least try to minimize my unnecessary paper clutter and start making document archiving easier and more searchable.

Given the not inconsiderable cost of the unit, I’m embarrassed to say that I got busy with other stuff and haven’t yet returned to using the ScanSnap in any automated way.

Doesn’t mean I’m not interested or haven’t gotten started…  read more »

Now that Steve has announced there’s an iPhone/iPod Touch SDK coming in February, what’s at the top of your application wish list?

I have a friend who told me he was thinking about giving his project managers a weekly pile of chips that could be redeemed for person-hours in meetings. So, to schedule firewalled, group face-time, the PM would need to cough up the equivalent number of tokens from her pile. Thus, one, long, all-hands meeting might require the whole week’s stack. While, fewer, shorter meetings with smaller groups made the pile go further.

It was just an idea, and I’m pretty sure he never implemented it, but I think it’s a fascinating concept. Why? Because I love the idea of re-introducing scarcity into systems that lack boundaries.  read more »

Most businesses and an increasing number of people (including me) are looking for friction-free ways for teams to deal with incoming public email accounts. Whether you’re managing a home eBay company, fielding FAQs, or reviewing incoming resumes, it seems like there must be some good, lightweight web apps for teams to use and collaborate around.

Ron Richards just pointed me to Cerberus, and I’ve previously looked at DayLite, MailTank, and Sugar. I like the trouble-ticket approach in some ways, but I also wish it could be prettied up — ideally including remote form submission from your own domains.

edit 2007-08-27 09:17:40: Shoulda mentioned: relevant self-links are okay on this one.