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A few months ago, I did a “Getting Things Done” presentation for the team here at SnapStream.  As I’ve mentioned before, GTD is a system developed by David Allen for organizing and dealing with your tactical commitments.  The presentation focused on two things…the concepts of Getting Things Done, and specific recommendations on how to implement Getting Things Done at our company.

The recommendations in the second part of the presentation were synthesized by me based around some simple concepts about communication and the various modes of communication we engage in.

Introduction

So while this post is mainly about e-mail, I do need to set everything up with some background information first.

The concepts were:

• Knowledge work requires large and uninterrupted blocks of time
• Interruptions cost about 15 minutes of time
• “Rich” channels are best suited for certain kinds of discussions, but also waste the most time.

The last point probably warrants some explanation.  “Rich” channels are those channels where you can communicate with more than just words.  Face to face is the richest, followed by phone, etc.

You often hear that anywhere from sixty to eighty percent of communication is non-verbal.  Zig Ziglar gives an excellent example in one of his seminars where he says a sentence eight different ways…and you’ll have to excuse me, because I don’t recall the exact phrase, but it goes something like

“I did not say that he struck your friend”

Try placing emphasis on different words of the sentence and you’ll see that the meaning of the sentence changes completely.  And that’s not all…gesticulations, the face…many factors contribute to our understanding of another person besides just actual words.

In the The Naked Face, a New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell recounts how Paul Ekman, a professor who has researched and produced a complete catalog of facial expressions, has also actually mastered the ability to read people through those expressions.

The point is, non-verbal communication matters…and possibly more than you thought it did.

Anyway, moving forward.  The modes of communication were:

• Meetings and conversations
• Phone calls
• E-mail
• Instant messaging
• Paper

And there’s the setup for my next few articles.

Let’s talk about e-mail, shall we? 🙂

We use Microsoft Outlook here, but many of these techniques can be translated to other programs…the concepts are what’s important.

Tip #1 – Define specific times to check your e-mail.

Which really means, don’t check your e-mail all the time.  The ability to maintain a singular focus is important in reaching your flow state…and if you maintain habits that constantly distract you, you’re simply doing yourself a disservice.  Checking your e-mail is often one of those habits.  See the 15 minute rule bout distractions above.

I recommend setting aside specific times of the day to deal with e-mail when you’re already breaking flow anyway.  Usually, that means when you get into work, after a meal, and perhaps, right before you leave.

Do you have people in your company that expect you to live on e-mail because they do?  Remind them respectfully of why you manage your time differently.  At SnapStream, we’ve tried to establish cultural boundaries about time…and that’s important, because a lot of people are just not comfortable saying “Hey, I’m not going to get to that until later” to other people. But respecting the time of your fellow coworkers and your own time as well is important. It has to be cultural at any company.  It has to be explicitly OK.

There’s only one good exception to this rule, and that’s when external customers or partners operate differently and expect instantaneous responses to e-mails.  In that case, the appropriate thing to do is to have a person in the company responsible for filtering and managing these communications so that the rest of the organization can get actual work done.

If you think that the above isn’t you and somehow you still need to live on e-mail, I’d strongly suggest considering your case for it.  Be honest with yourself.  Obviously,  I can’t tell you what side of the line you’re on, but what I can do is remind you that most people in an organization should not be living on e-mail.  So, at the very least, take stock of your organization and see if the percentage is too high…that might force you to think a little harder about who should be doing what.

Tip #2 – Disable automatic e-mail downloading and alerts

The corollary to not checking your e-mail all the time is that you must also make sure the e-mail program doesn’t keep checking your e-mail for you.  Again, the interruptions only serve to distract and break your focus.

Unfortunately, most programs enable these notifications by default, and that’s because, in general, people like programs that behave as if they are doing something cool.  Additionally, getting a new e-mail, for many folks, is the equivalent of a little digital self-validation.  It says, “Hey, someone out there might have liked me enough to e-mail me today.”

That’s good for warm fuzzy feelings…but taking hits from the digital crack pipe is hell on personal productivity.  And again, unfortunately, I have to be realistic here and acknowledge that the warm fuzzy feelings win out for most people.  I surmise that most people haven’t thought about their own productivity hard enough to derive any sort of pleasure from turning the notifications off…I’ve seen far too many people rationalize dumber things already.  So while I don’t like the default configurations of e-mail programs, I guess I can’t blame the companies who make the programs either…at a superficial level, it’s what people want.

Now on to specific recommendations for Microsoft Outlook.

First you want to go to Tools/Options.

Next, click on E-Mail Options.

Then, click on Advanced E-mail Options.

Finally, uncheck all those accursed notifications.

Congratulations, you’ve just freed yourself from the digital crack pipe!  Read and deal with e-mail on your own terms.

OK…this post is running long, so I’m going to split this into two parts.  Part 2 coming soon…

Update: The second part is now available.

As I move on from the inaugural tip, I feel I should mention that I write these tips from the context of what is right for me.  I do not claim to know you personally or know exactly what’s right for you.  Nevertheless, I have synthesized my opinions from a fairly large base of feedback over time, and they are, in my opinion, correct.  There is the off chance that one of the tips may, somehow, not work for your particular situation.  But, I strongly believe that you, the reader, will be far better off implementing all the tips and dealing with the few that don’t quite fit your situation than you will be doing nothing at all.

Now on to this tip.  I was inspired to choose the minimalist philosophy as the next topic after seeing Raymond Chen post about his office and a subsequent post about another minimalist office.  Great posts, please read them!

Being minimalist, to me, means that I’m constantly throwing away things that no longer add value to my life.  And that I strive to only purchase those things which will add ongoing, lasting value to myself.

I initially did not choose to be minimalist.  Rather, I chose to start a startup, and living in a minimalist fashion found its way to me after that.  The company needed money, not me.  And it would have seemed very strange for me to worry at all about myself while the team was sacrificing to get SnapStream off the ground.

Honestly, I probably could have spent more money if I wanted to.  I come from a middle class background and it would not have been difficult to spend a few more dollars a month.  But it would not have been right, nor would it have sent the right message.

Eventually, I came to realize something interesting.  I was still alive, and I was still pretty happy.  What was going on here?

Prior to my time starting SnapStream, I used to spend a lot of time and money shipping things back from college to home, and vice versa.  I most likely spent more money then than I do now, although I’ve never really been a huge spender.  It was quite unpleasant sending things back and forth, and after a while, I realized how much time and effort I was wasting doing it.

Afterwards, I did some consulting work and traveled a lot.  Again, you can’t take much with you.  But I was still pretty happy.  I got to hang out with friends and co-workers, and as long as I had an internet connection in the hotel room, I could chat with friends and play Starcraft at night.

People who travel a lot see ownership of material items in a different context.  That’s why the anecdote in Raymond’s “The simplified office” post is so funny.

I knew a guy once who claimed that you didn’t really
own anything that you couldn’t carry at a dead run
while firing an AK-47 over your shoulder.
This fellow was the only person I ever knew who lived that philosophy.

But you know, I don’t think you need to be in a wartime scenario to benefit from this observation.  Let’s put this another way.

If you only had a backpack’s worth of stuff to take with you…or a trunk, or a car’s worth…what would you take?

Having decided that, look at all the other stuff you own.  Why didn’t you choose those things?  Can you replace some of those things with better things that can make more of a difference in your life?

In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell points out in rapid fire succession how too much information causes people to make the wrong decisions.  “Too much information” or “TMI” is a cardinal concept when you design for usability.  It’s hard to make the right decision when you’re presented with a bunch of wrong ones.

Look at search engines, for example.  Excite was one of the first engines on the web. Google came along some time after that.  Visit both pages for a second.  If you wanted to send your mom to one of these pages to search for something, which one would you choose?

Is it any wonder that Google won?

In fact, extra possessions are essentially extra variables in your life.  Extra things that have to be decided upon.  Stuff that you see in a room that causes you to think about totally irrelevant and unhelpful topics.

Does your life look like the Excite page? Or like Google’s?  How much time are you spending looking at possessions that have no bearing on where you want to be in five years?

In “Getting Things Done“, which is another topic of some importance in its own right, David Allen.talks about the concept of open loops.  Open loops are things in your life that haven’t been put in their natural place.  Things that still have to be dealt with.  While I won’t get into the entire justification here, David Allen makes a good case for why having open loops in your life causes stress and uncertainty.

Again, the analogy to possessions comes to mind.  That old computer? What am I going to do with that?  Oh well, not really sure.  Guess I’ll come back to it later.  That old book?  The information might be useful later.  That new gadget?  It would be really great to have.  Not really sure why, but I can think of a few reasons.

How many times will you make that decision in your head, every time you see the object, before you throw it out?  How many times will it pop back into your head, for no reason, before you take a final action that puts that object into its proper place?  How much time will your mind waste breaking flow while you think about such trivial things?  Again, an argument for taking final action on such items.

In the “The Millionaire Next Door“, the authors give repeated evidence of the counterintuitive ways in which millionaires live.  Namely, that millionaires spend money differently.  When we see people with expensive clothes, luxurious surroundings, or new gadgets every week, we are tempted to think that these people are very rich.  In fact, more often than not, the simple fact is that these people live a high consumption lifestyle…they cannot control how they spend their own money.

We naturally think that because someone can afford to spend money on such silly things like a new car every year, they must be very rich.  After all, we ourselves would never spend money like that unless we had a whole lot of it!  True for some people, but there is usually a simpler and more mundane story in play here…these people are actually just not very smart about money.

There are numerous stories in this book about generational effects of money as well.  For example, gifts of money from parent to child actually lower the earning potential of the child below his peers, even with that gift factored in.  Additionally, wealth and earning potential often dissipate from parent to child.  Most millionaires are self made, not old money. 

Amazing, isn’t it?  A well meaning parent cannot help but help his own child, and yet the truth is that he hurts him instead by unnaturally easing the pressure to succeed in the form of a free house and some extra spending money.  What would you do as a parent in a similar situation?

Enough about money…what does this have to do with minimalism?  The high consumption lifestyle is a very clear pattern followed by people who do not reach millionaire status.  I found it enlightening that the presence of money could literally enslave the way in which these people and even their children think.  I made a decision, after reading this particular book, that I would not allow myself to be consumed by money and material possessions as so many people are.

In summary, I hope I’ve made a good case to you as to why the minimalist philosophy works.  By constantly throwing things away, you are forced to remove all the distractions from your life which don’t add value.  In actuality, it’s not the act of removing things from your life that adds value.  Rather, the mental room that you create when you throw things away…that old computer, those ratty clothes, the out of date books and junk mail on your table…can now be filled with more of the things which truly enrich your existence…friends, new experiences, tools to enhance your productivity, and your time contributing to society.  To live minimally is to live a fuller, more purposeful life.

Thank you for reading.

I figured that it might be interesting to clue people in on the little things I do to try and improve my life.  I find myself constantly picking up on little things that other people don’t do and I’m sure I can help a few people by posting what I’ve learned so far.  So let’s get started.

As you may have gathered from the title of the article, this particular post says something that’s been repeated a thousand times before by other people about work…but it bears repeating.

A very common approach to any problem is called the 80/20 rule…which in this case, means that you can get about 80 percent of the impact with the first 20 percent of the effort.  In other words, if you want to start optimizing your life, work on optimizing the chunks that take the most time.

So let’s look at how we spend our lives.

There are 7 * 24 = 168 hours in a week.  Let’s assume the amount of sleep you get is non-negotiable. Some people have questioned this assumption successfully, (ref polyphasic sleep), which you may follow up on…but I will leave that discussion for later.

Assume 8 hours a day, 7 days of a week of sleep.  That totals out to 56 hours sleeping.

That leaves you with 112 hours where you’re actually awake.

40 hours working
10 hours eating
7 hours commuting
etc.

For most people, the next biggest chunk of time is spent working.  36% of the time we spend awake is spent working, and often more.  Work is an important and significant part of our lives.

So let’s talk about work.

We spend a lot of time working.  For something that takes such a significant portion of our lives, one would hope that we’re at least happy while working.

Are you happy at work?

There are a lot of people in this world who treat work as something separate from their personal lives.  They run eagerly out the door after putting in their requisite 8 hours per day.  Essentially, these people spend a third of their lives waiting to live the other two thirds of their lives.

My advice is not to live your life that way.  If you see glimmers of yourself in the above statements, you now have a chance to take a third of your life back, and I suggest you follow up on that opportunity.

Some people try to achieve work/life balance by saying “I’m only going to work 8 hours in a job I don’t care about all that much, and then I’m going to go home and spend time with my family or friends”.  Assigning a predetermined amount of time to work is a poor way of approaching the situation, and it’s even worse when you consider that the balance here is between meaningful/not meaningful.  That’s not balance, it’s imbalance.

I don’t believe that you cannot properly achieve work/life balance by separating work from your personal life, and yet that is exactly the approach that many people try to take.

So let’s adopt a new term here, since balance is a bad thing to call what this really is.  Instead of calling it work/life balance, let’s call it work/life maximization.

First of all, the trade off should be between meaningful and meaningful when it comes to the time spent in significant chunks of your life.  If this isn’t the case, then you must try very hard to move towards that goal, because the payoff will be tremendous.  Alter or change your vocation to make this happen if you have to.  It’s that important.

And second, if and when you enjoy both work and your personal life, realize that the point is not to “balance” the two or impose limits on each.  The equilibrium should instead arrive naturally, such that you feel a natural pressure to relax or switch when you need to.  Your goal should be to devote the appropriate amount of time to each part of your life such that the sum total of meaningfulness or enjoyment you derive is the highest possible.

I sketched out a little diagram here to convey the idea.

For example, let’s say you spent all 112 waking hours working.  You’d be all the way over to the left, and most likely you would be rather unhappy.

On the other hand, let’s say you spent all 112 waking hours watching TV or playing video games.  You might enjoy yourself short-term, but ultimately you’d probably feel like a bum and get bored of all that stuff rather quickly to boot.

My point here is that work and personal time are clearly intertwined.  Don’t strive to balance your time…strive instead to maximize the impact of your time. Somewhere in the middle, at the very peak of that happiness curve, is the point that’s right for you.

Try this exercise if you don’t know what your vocation should be.
1. How do you envision yourself 20 years from now? What would you want people to say about you?  Are you doing anything now to move towards that vision?
2. What do you do for fun?  How do you feel when you are doing those things?  Do you feel the same way when you are at work?
3. How much time do you spend doing things that are uninspiring or unmeaningful? Can you do anything to take that time back for yourself? Get creative if you have to.

All I’ve really done here is make a case that you should enjoy your work.  If you don’t enjoy your work, find some way to make it happen via some of the above advice…a shift in such a major area can and will produce a profound impact on your quality of life.  It’s really that simple.  No doubt this would be a big change for a lot of people. But often you have to make big changes to get big results.  You have to embrace these changes if you want to enjoy the resulting rewards.

Hope this helps.