Confession time
by Volker Weber
Here are a couple of things you may or may not find surprising:
- I do not file my email in folders.
- I reply to email immediately.
- I do not have a todo list.
- I memorize my weekly schedule.
- I do not attend conference calls.
- Sometimes I do. But it is an exception.
- Cold calling me is a waste of time. Send an email.
- My inbox is never longer than one page.
- I do not have a PGP key.
- I do not want to know your secret.
Result: I always have plenty of time.
Comments
Maybe you should give lessons how you manage that. Or - better - write a book. Because you can do it from home ;-)
This book would not be very helpful. Everybody needs to find a system that works with his own skills. I have good memory, probably better than most other people.
Most of it works for me as well, except I try doing more lists lately. For me, keeping it clean and simple is key. If that is not possible, I load it off (hence the lists).
No scroll-bar in the inbox, amen to that.
It might be time to re-think #9 ;-)
Hahaha, brief and precise as always. And I share quite some of your points. Though would love to do the "no conference calls" thing as well ;)...
Having just been engaged in rescuing a new client's 40Gb of old email from a broken store in which their entire business life seemed to reside, I thoroughly endorse your email strategy.
Re 2: you mentioned recently that you processed e-mails in batches - so it's not immediately, no?
I know that I let a new e-mail distract me when I'm procrastinating.
You mean 'as soon as I have read it', no?.
For me the big time-saver is 'no meetings'. My previous employers (very large engineering company) had these soul-destroying marathon meetings were no one was prepared and nobody took any decisions.
Mailbox app on iOS (www.mailboxapp.com) works for me. Great tool for getting control over your inbox.
I have 5488 mails in my inbox folder...
Jesper, move them to a folder "Old mail". It's going to speed up your work.
Andrew, exactly.
Gerhard, no, it's deliberate.
I have a horrendous memory, but I do something similar. I leave everything in the inbox, and once every four months or so I grab it all and move it to 'Old Mail'. I have just three folders, and I only delete emails with big attachments. Space is cheaper than my time.
My mail is full-text indexed, and I find boolean searching is the best way for me to find things.
This has been one of the best productivity seminars I've attended!
LoveIt!
"I have good memory, probably better than most other people." Well, one way of doing it.
I have a bad memory, which is a good filter for my priorities.
Indeed, it is. Just work from the top. ;-)
So, if you don´t file your eMails into folder and your inbox isn´t longer than a page, .. do you then delete all the old(er) emails?? Or do you extract useful information and file it somewhere else (OneNote?) ?
Mail is removed from Inbox, but still in All Mail. I do extract info into OneNote as well.
