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I’m still not convinced Inbox Zero is necessary

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My [intlink id=”inboxzero” type=”post”]previous Inbox Zero post[/intlink] has generated a lot of disagreement and controversy. I can’t say I didn’t expect it. I’m really torn. Part of me certainly agrees that if you work in a culture where everything of value happens via email and no one is willing to talk face-to-face or by phone, then email may be the only way you can work. But I just don’t believe that you have to be a victim of such a culture.

Email is not just paper mail put online. People use it quite differently. Email is fundamentally different from prior forms of communication in that it comes at virtually no cost to the sender. The size of your inbox is not under your control. It is under the control of those who want to send you stuff. Back when written letters required effort, addressing, stamps, and delays, people did not use them to pass off work, delegate things they could do more easily themselves, and so on.

By removing all barriers to sending, email has made all of us recipients of whatever drivel anyone wants to send. Given the slowness of the medium (even very fast typists can’t type nearly as fast as they can talk) and the poor use of it by most senders, my observation is that it fails to make us more productive in many cases; time spent working towards Inbox Zero increases our activity and feelings of accomplishment while actually reducing measurable results. (The exception to this is when email is used to communicate reference information, shared documents, etc.)

A Couple Of Tips That Help

Am I advocating ignoring messages in your inbox? I guess not. But I am advocating adding back barriers to having people send you email in the first place. Don’t respond immediately. Ask people to come talk in person if they have anything of substance to discuss.  Use short, almost  useless answers (or don’t answer!) for messages that should never have been sent in the first place.

Sorting your inbox by subject or sender can also help you quickly identify the messages you want to respond to, and keep your brain on one topic long enough to make some progress, but it’s only a partial solution, since you are still at the mercy of other people’s subject lines and time-wasting messages. (And besides, Gmail won’t let you sort by sender, only by it’s idea of what a conversation is.)

Challenge Me With Data

Want to challenge me? Log your email for a week. Write down (or put in a spreadsheet) each message that hits your inbox, whether it really required your attention or not, and what job outcome would have been affected had you ignored it. Also note how much total time you spent on email. Then give me a call and we’ll examine the log message by message, and decide how useful your email is. Cries of “I just HAVE to do it all” won’t convince me, but data will. (And though I’m willing to change my mind, I’m going to bet that no one reading this is actually willing to do the experiment for fear of having data that contradicts the justification for their email addiction.)

But saying “I need to process all my email every day” does not regain the time you’re wasting on email, nor does it make you more productive, nor does it change the fact  that email buffets your attention and uses up brain power that then can’t be used for anything else. (See the book “The Power of Full Engagement” for a discussion of how our attention and willpower is limited, and gets used up by activities that require thought, regardless of whether those are the “right” activities or not.)  Email is a communication tool, nothing more. Like any tool, its use should be measured in how much more work it helps you do.

Email is Still an Incredible Time Suck

The fact remains that an hour of email triage a day is six work-weeks a year. That’s an awful lot of time to devote to email unless you can make a convincing case that a month and a half’s worth of your results wouldn’t have been possible without doing it over email.

Personally,  I like saving my brainpower for the things I care about. Not everyone has the same priorities. But as I get older and find I have less energy to spend on trivia, email stands out as the number one drain of my energy that’s high on dopamine punch, but low on measurable results.

Peek behind the curtain: Who actually benefits from your ‘extended warranty’?

I bought a printer recently. The store clerk offered to sell me the 3-year warranty, which cost 1/3 as much as the entire printer. I confess, the very idea astounded me.

Apparently, I’m supposed to believe that the printer can’t be expected to last 3 entire years without breaking. In which case, why am I willing to pay hundreds of dollars for it? Shouldn’t I have enough faith in the manufacturer that I don’t have to buy a separate service contract? In fact, shouldn’t the manufacturer itself have enough faith in its own product that I should be confident it will continue to work?

Warranties are the measure of how much a manufacturer believes their product is shoddy.

It’s that simple. If a manufacturer truly built well and believed it, they would offer an extended warranty for free. In fact, when the warranty is invoked, the manufacturer could use that as a chance to investigate and discover how to make their product better.

But these days, it’s become standard practice for companies to make huge amounts of money selling extended warranties. The good news is that they wouldn’t get sold if they weren’t profitable for the companies, which implies that most of the time, the products under warranty don’t need to be replaced. The bad news is that it may be more profitable to offer relatively shoddy products and sell the extended warranty than to manufacture good products to begin with.

Either way, manufacturers, don’t offer me a warranty, please. I’ll simply take it as an indication that you do such a poor job you’re not willing to stand behind your own handiwork.

Inbox Zero and the Critical Mistake That Saps Productivity

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Everyone loves the concept of “Inbox Zero.” The idea is easy: make it a priority to empty your email inbox every day. It feels great. I agree that it feels great. One member of the Get-it-Done Guy community said it’s how he knows he has control over his email.

I respectfully disagree that inbox zero means you have control over your email. You don’t control the content, the order, or the volume of email that arrives. Inbox Zero is basically a reactive strategy—it says that your inbox is so high priority that you should attend to everything in it every day. Since you don’t control the content, that means shifting your brain through several topics just to scan your inbox in a single session. The order you have to think about those topics is determined by the order messages arrive, not by the importance or relevance of the topic to you. Brains don’t do well with rapid, random context switching. You’re using up brainpower just in the process of triaging the whole inbox. This isn’t just a philosophical issues. In “The Power of Full Engagement” by Tony Schwartz cites research that we only have a certain amount of mental capacity between each sleep cycle. Your brain doesn’t care what you use it on. You can use it up triaging your inbox just as easily as you can use it actually doing good, high-quality work. When I’ve paid close attention, I’ve noticed that email saps my actual productivity.

The amount of your email is determined by others, and the amount of time it takes to scan your inbox is proportional to the amount of email they send. Unless you’re in a completely reactive job and the only people who email you are people whose agenda aligns with yours, taking your time to sort through their email can waste a lot of time. I get about 100 emails a day. If I spent as much as 30 seconds on each one, that would take up the equivalent of a month and a half a year. There’s simply no way that’s a productive use of time in aggregate.

I believe that an empty inbox just means you’ve ceded control of your thinking and priorities to everyone who emails you. They control the volume, order, and substance of your attention for the time you’re processing your email. It *feels good* to have an empty inbox, but it also feels good to gorge on Oreo ice cream cake. That doesn’t mean that Oreo ice cream cake is good for you, only that it feels good. Inbox Zero has the extra sugary bonus that since *some* email is an essential part of our job, it’s easy to believe (with no evidence at all) that therefore it’s useful to spend some time on *all* email.

Rather than striving for inbox zero, I advocate learning to identify the truly relevant emails very, very quickly, with an absolute minimum of cognitive load or context switching.

Hint: consider the concept of semantic priming. When you consider a topic (or even just a word), your brain unconsciously brings to mind associated concepts. I’m assuming that this is part of what happens to drain the mental energy that email drains. How would you use semantic priming to your benefit while processing your inbox?

Hint #2: Consider that humans find it easier to choose between 2 things than 3, and that the framing of a choice–e.g. the choice to read/respond to an email versus to ignore it–will dramatically change the amount of mental energy needed to process that email.

Hint #3: Consider the behavior of people who send mail. Contrast their pre-email behavior (stamps, envelopes, etc.) and post-email. What was different? Why? What implications does this have for responding to senders?

The Power of Science to Solve Today’s Complex Problems

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They’re narrowing the streets in my neighborhood, and everyone is up in arms. People are freaked out, saying that narrowing from sort-of-1.5-lanes to 1 lane+bike lane is going to cause huge traffic snarls.

On the face of it, this sounds reasonable. After all, won’t fewer lanes mean less space for traffic, so traffic must go slower?

That depends. If all drivers simply stayed in their lanes, never made turns, and drove at constant speeds, yes. But they’ve been doing a *lot* of experimenting in Boston with alternative configurations. They’ve compared the results and found that sometimes narrower streets with curb cut-outs and bike lanes result in all kinds of unexpected benefits.

It’s long been known that widening a street won’t necessarily ease congestion because people simply drive more, until the congestion reaches prior levels. “Archie, it’s such a nice day, let’s go drive down the nice, new freeway.”

This is called science. We measure what happens, we compare and contrast, and we learn the world doesn’t always work the way we think it will.

If science always matched up to our intuition, we would have invented high technology 10,000 years ago. We couldn’t have technology until a relatively small number of people invented the scientific method and were willing to believe it’s results over what their intuition said. Intuitively, a 10-pound ball falls faster than a 1-pound ball, the Earth is flat, and the sun rises and sets. Science, however, shows that the balls fall at the same speed (acceleration, actually), the Earth is round, and it spins, rather than the sun moving.

Next time you find yourself getting defensive over some scientific study, stop. That’s a good thing; it means that maybe you can revise your beliefs to reflect reality. Read the study, consider with an open mind, and find out.

Science gave us ziplock bags. Who knows what might be next?

Safely Using Social Media In Your Professional Life

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Q: Hi Stever (and GIDG fans), I’m dreading creating separate professional twitter/facebook accounts because I don’t want to come up with another name (other than my own) and start building my network all over again. But I’m afraid I’ll bore my friends (who aren’t in my profession) if I start posting more career-related comments, and the overlap of friends/colleagues seems so inefficient to me. Is there any appropriate way to combine personal & professional social networks?

A: This is really hard, especially because businesspeople who want to see your personal life may realize you have two profiles and request access to the other one. (An employer would never ask to walk through your apartment before hiring you, but they’ll happily ask to see your Facebook profile.)

I would create a LinkedIn profile as my professional profile, and only give that one to colleagues. If they want access to my Facebook profile, I would politely explain that I keep that only for my non-work life and prefer not to mix the two.

If they object or complain, that’s valuable information that you’re working for (or about to work for) a company that does not respect your privacy and your boundaries. For me, that would be a huge red flag. Do you really want to spend your entire career with a company worrying about revealing your private life?

No matter what you decide, however, it’s still hard to control the information. If your “real” profile shares friends with a business colleague, they may see your private updates on the mutual friend’s wall, in their comments, etc., even though they can’t view your profile directly.

This is one of the interesting issues with social media: in the real world, humans can present themselves differently to different people and in different situations. Social media as we’ve implemented it makes that much, much more difficult. On one hand, it means we see each other, warts and all. On the other hand, I’ve met very few people who are accepting enough to forgive others’ perceived faults, which means displaying our warts could have bad social consequences. (Unless they’re shaped like four-leaf clovers. Those warts are universally admired and envied.)

Switching Mental Modes

Ever since my first management job, I’ve been confronted with a very unpleasant truth about myself: I don’t switch modes well. As a project manager, I was also doing some of the individual contributor work on the project. It was a disaster for me. When I was being Manager Boy, I would lose my place in the work I was doing and often fall behind. When I was being Individual Contributor Boy, I would lose my perspective and get totally engrossed in the project. Priorities would slip, relationships would fray, and things would fall apart.

I found that switching contexts like that is very hard for me. I can perform well as a manager. I can perform well as a worker. But I can’t switch between them or keep them both in my brain at once. I’m just not built that way.

Different roles require different kinds of thinking. Take a good look at yourself and decide: (1) are you good at all the kinds of thinking you’re being asked to do, (2) are you good at switching between the kinds of thinking you’re being asked to do, and (3) are you actually turning in the quality you know you’re capable of?

Arrange your life so you’re spending your time working in your strengths, or in areas that you want to become strengths. If you aren’t great at switching, at any given moment, try to limit your responsibilities to related tasks that minimize your need to change thought styles. Team up with people whose skills complement yours, to take care of the rest. In the long run, you’ll be happier and more productive.

Why I’m skeptical of social media

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I finally figured out why I don’t like social media. I can’t believe me it’s taken me this long. But you see, it involves feelings. And being a totally in-my-head geek, I don’t normally pay much attention to my feelings, though, of course, my feelings affect me profoundly.

I talked with my best friend Joel today for a little while. I got off the phone and felt warm and fuzzy and like I wanted to skip downstairs. Talking to Joel almost always leaves me feeling that way.

Then I spent 4 hours sucked into the maelstrom of social media. I tweeted, I posted status updates, and I did lots of back-and-forth conversations on various comment boards. While I feel a little spark of goodness and connection while I’m having those interactions, when I’m done, I feel drained and tired. Skipping is nowhere in the equation.

And that is why I don’t believe that these online relationships are healthy. They give us the short-term dopamine shot that connection gives us, but they go no further. And at least for me, they don’t give me the kind of joy and happiness that one-on-one, phone (or better yet, in-person) connection gives us.

I think that may be why theater is so compelling for me, too. I’d never attended plays until I was caught by the desire to act. It made sense if I wanted to act that I should at least see what it’s like to be an audience member.

Plays are less realistic than movies. The sets are paltry, compared to movies. The subtlety lacks, compared to movies (a subtle facial expression works great on a 60-foot screen but doesn’t work at all when viewed live from a distance of 60 feet). And yet I find them quite compelling. Why?

But it’s live. It’s in-person. There’s some kind of connection I feel with the characters in a play that’s just not there in a movie. People talk about the energy of having a life audience. It’s tangible. There are levels of communication that happen live that doesn’t happen virtually. And I simply prefer the energy of the live connection to the intellectual depth (hah!) of the virtual connections.

Stever starring in Opera this weekend!

I am goofing off today. Yes, world, it’s true: sometimes the Get-it-Done Guy doesn’t feel like working. Excited about opera tonight!

Opening tonight at the Majestic Theater is Boston Opera’s Maria Padilla. There will be 3 shows: tonight, Sunday, and Tuesday. If you’ve never seen opera before, the singing and costumes are amazing. It’s full of drama, intrigue, and emotion. Lots and lots of emotion. Student rush tickets are just $10.

The official site is: http://www.operaboston.org/operas_padilla.php

I am taking the liberty of giving my own plot synopsis here:

Maria Padilla is the story of a major historical figure, known to us only as “Number Three.” (His full name is rumored to be “Spanish Soldier Number Three.”) His first recorded sighting is as a young servant in the Padilla household, pouring drinks at the wedding of Ines Padilla.

Though the drinks were rumored to contain nothing but alcohol, some scholars have their suspicions. He is also spotted bringing in garlands of an unspecified (and possibly psychotropic) flower for the bridal party.

It was shortly after this wedding that momentous events were set in motion. Maria, the other Padilla daughter, became clearly and irrationally smitten in the love affair that was to change a kingdom. Could the drinks have been doctored? Were the flowers casting hallucinogenic pollen throughout the unsuspecting assemblage? We may only speculate; you must decide for yourself. The fact that he appears to have access to the bedroom and even nightstand of the most famous players only adds to evidence of his already-rising influence.

His next recorded appearance is as a soldier in the Spanish army. He actually carries the pen with which the royal marriage contract between France and Spain is signed. In keeping with his brilliant, manipulative style, it is through such tiny gestures at pivotal moments that his entire plan was carried out. Is it any wonder, then, that he is the one who safekeeps the gorgette and only much later returns it to the fray?

It is at this point we lose track of him for quite some time. He reappears, having risen to status of courtier and, indeed, helps to prepare and present the royal cloak, itself. It was shortly hereafter that he changed allegiances and threw his lot in with France.

The reason can be known only to him, but the more romantically-inclined believe he was spurned after proclaiming his love for the other Padilla daughter, Bernice. The more strategically-inclined scholars pooh-pooh the notion, noting that Number Three did not (at that point in his career) have the vocal abilities to carry an aria of the requisite emotionality and volume. They say his defection was simply the obvious next step in expanding his influence across national borders.

And expand his influence, he did! He rapidly became a member of the French army and confidante of the court. He is soon entrusted with supervising transportation of the French dowry and is present in the room when the Betrayal Itself takes place.

It was then that the final event in this chapter of his life takes place. To reveal details here would be inappropriate, for obvious reasons.

The successor opera (rumored to have been written and then misplaced by Donizetti) is titled “Number Three: The Ruling Years.” His descendants remained deeply active in intelligence work and power politics, extending fully into the 20th century, as his three-times-great grandson (“Number Six”) was taken prisoner in a well-documented series of political incidents.

Pop up ads are necessary for advertising business models

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My friend tweeted me about how obnoxious web popups are. You know the kind: you’re reading a web page and your reading is interrupted by a pop-up urging you to join a mailing list or buy a product. It’s a total interruption, and almost everyone clicks past the popup. Why would merchants be so stupid, he asked.

They aren’t stupid. Because, my friends, those popups work.

We’re in an attention arms race that won’t be doing anything but escalating. The reality is that content is not free. It takes time and effort to put up web sites. Ultimately, those must be paid for somehow. Since very few people want to pay for content directly, advertising is the only way to pay for it. But the more ads we see, the more we ignore. Advertisers must get increasingly in-your-ace to have even a small chance of motivating you to buy something. And at the end of the day, it’s that purchase that helps them feed their families, not the legions of people who read for free and never spend a dime.

I hate popup ads too, but I make my living as a content creator. I understand the reasoning and reluctantly join in the war for attention, myself. Because if enough of you don’t buy my products and services, I’ll have to shut down my business and get a job plucking chickens or something. That wouldn’t be very pleasant for you, for me, or for the chicken.

So if you’ve enjoyed my free content, please consider supporting me by buying something in the shop, or joining my Time Control membership program.

There’s such a thing as too much convenience.

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One of the things that amuses me most about Americans (of which I am one) is how we blather on and on about “freedom” and then voluntarily give it up at every available opportunity. As long as we give it up in the service of commerce, rather than in the service of government, we seem to embrace the steady erosion of our rights, our health, our privacy, and even our minds.

After a decade of brainwashing that I need to have the latest and greatest gadget on my body at all times, I tried an experiment. A few weeks ago, I went to a conference and made the conscious decision to leave my cell phone in my hotel room safe each day. After a couple of days of fidgeting and feeling disconnected, I relaxed and returned to my pre-cell-phone state of attention and being-present. It was a really wonderful feeling. I picked up my messages after the conference each day and was able to be focused in how I returned and responded to those calls.

The moment the conference was over, of course, I went right back to being a cell phone addict.

Last night, I met a friend for dinner. I purposely left my cell phone at home, and surprise!, my attention was on her all throughout dinner. It felt kinda neat.

If you’re up for an experiment, try going 2 days without your cell phone. Pretend it’s a landline, leave it at home, make plans with people before leaving the home, etc. It actually produces a nice, high-quality evening. I’m starting to believe there’s an optimum convenience point. Too little convenience and life is drudgery. But too much and life becomes an endless stream of distractions/interruptions.

Hint: If your immediate response to this is “there’s no way I could ever do that,” stop and think again. You absolutely could. The fact that you’re so defensive about it and eager to justify not even trying has more to do with the symptoms of addiction that cell phones trigger than with reality. Just do it! You’ll survive!