Sorted Archived Flagged
Usually by 4 o’clock every afternoon I’m fairly certain that everyone in the free world is taking fifteen minutes to either email me or call me on the phone - seriously, it’s cricket quiet in my studio till 4ish most days, but busybusybusy from 4 to 6pm - In the last year or so I’ve started planning my day around the phenomenon - which I’ve named ‘saul-bombing’ - the challenge of surviving a ‘saul-bombing’ is how quickly you can sort, and flag the stuff that actually must get done overnight from the stuff that although it looks important - actually doesn’t require any action on my part. My usual approach is to quickly flag the do’sand take note of and then archive the not-do’s. I then take the flagged items and fold them into my list of work to be done - hopefully without causing a epic ripple that fills my week with late nights - it takes some resolve to watch your week deteriorate before your very eyes, but with a few simple goals - you can at least make the process mentally easier.
- Don’t leave any unflagged email in your inbox, get the info out, get the email archived, if you’re ballsy you could delete it, I’m not, I’ve never regretted having 10 years of emails to refer back to.
- Don’t go to bed without figuring out your hit-list for tomorrow, you’ll sleep better.
- If it isn’t an emergency, no all-nighters, they seem like a good idea at the time, but in the long run your taking longer to accomplish less work.
- In the morning avoid your email, and all social networking (twitter, facebook, etc) till you knock a few items off your list, that will help minimize the ripple caused by tomorrows ‘saul-bombing’.
Tagged: email