Geek | Manager

Ever get a great idea and then forget it because you didn’t have a pad and paper to hand? Ever wake up in the middle of the night with the solution to your biggest problem and then in the morning have nothing left other than that nagging feeling that you’ve forgotten something?

This used to happen to me all the time. First, I tried carrying a hipster PDA, but remembering to take it EVERYWHERE was difficult. Then I realised that I already had something that I always carried with me — my mobile phone!

Now, I have a very simple process: any time I get a good idea, whether it be for a blog post, a solution for a wicked problem or an idea for a great new site, I send myself a text. Try it — it works great!

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Sometimes you just need to get your head down and get some work done. Do you find that you’re staying late in the office, or coming in really early, just to be productive? If so, you need a “Do Not Disturb” strategy.

In the olden days (i.e. before the introduction of cube farms), getting some quiet time in which to focus was easy — you simply closed your office door. In the modern office, though, there are a myriad attention-seekers. Online, you can choose to shut yourself off — sign off from IM, close down your email (or at least stop it reminding you of new mail every two minutes) or even just unplug yourself. You can turn your cellphone to silent and set your office phone to go direct to voicemail. But what about people coming up to your desk to bug you directly?

Essentially, you need a way to signal to the world that you are busy and getting some serious work done. Pick a hat or scarf or something and wear it whenever you’re “in the zone”. Educate your coworkers and customers that if you have that article of clothing on, then they should turn around, go back to their desk and email you instead. Better yet, get your entire team to adopt such a strategy — that way if one of you is head-down and someone makes to disturb you, your team members will run interference, explaining the system to them.

The most important thing, whatever signal you choose, is to BE CONSISTENT and use the signal sparingly. Some people put on headphones when they want to concentrate, but because they also sometimes put on headphones when they just fancy a little Caliko, noone really knows whether it’s OK to disturb them or not. And when in doubt, chances are folks will go for the option that benefits them most — interrupting you.

UPDATE: This got picked by Lifehacker — great content in the comments there (and now here too!). Particularly it seems that in less of a team situation, having a polite sign can work wonders…

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Ever have one of those days when you get to 4pm and have NO IDEA what you’ve achieved? Chances are pretty good you’ve been “doing stuff” … checking your email, dealing with queries, answering your voicemail and possibly even getting the odd bit of work done … but you still don’t feel like you’ve had a productive day because everything has been reactive rather than proactive. Always-on can be fantastic, but being linked in to every possible distraction for every minute of the working day is often not the most effective way to work.

So what can you do about it?

Personally, I’ve had a great deal of success with a very simple strategy that is mainly about dealing with email distraction. Working in technology, I find that most of my communication comes in via email — if your main distractions are IM or phone, then you might want to adapt this.

Essentially the key concept is to do email blitzes. Don’t try to check email every 2 mins and deal with emails one-by-one. Instead, take an hour, or even a half or quarter hour and mission through as much email processing as you can. For each email that you read, decide whether it:

1. Shouldn’t have gotten to you anyway –> delete it
2. Just needed reading –> archive it
3. Needs a response –> do it right then and there, if it’ll take less than 1 minute
4. Needs a more indepth response –> leave it (or move to a “needs indepth response” folder)*
5. Needs you to perform some action –> add it to your normal todo tracking system

I find that taking 30-60 minutes, twice a day, helps me to stay 100% on top of my email. The timings of the blitzes are important though — I find first thing in the morning and just after lunch are the best times for me. The former is because I’m in a role where sometimes there are urgent fires to be put out — others feel quite rightly than an alternative strategy can be more effective. The latter is because just after lunch is typically quite an energy lull — especially if you work in the North East where they believe in proper hot lunches!

At other points in my career, when I had different job responsibilities, I used to find that mid morning (after the initial “get stuff done” burst of early morning energy had passed) and mid afternoon (around 3pm, when everyone just wants to get a cup of tea) were the best times for my email blitzes.

Whatever the timings, though, restricting how much of my life I spent in Outlook or Notes or Thunderbird to just a couple of email blitzes a day has improved my productivity immensely.

Want more tips on managing your email? Try these links:

• 5 fast email productivity tips
• Inbox Zero series over on 43Folders
• 10 strategies for getting a handle on your workday from Lifehacker

* I just leave things that need a more in-depth response in my inbox, which is against some of the Inbox Zero-style teachings, but then I easily manage to keep my inbox to less than a screen so I’m happy with my own process here YMMV.

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