Email and IM can be a deadly destroyer of work productivity.
In fact, inbox anticipation nearly ruined my life. My dogs were mad at me. An email was the only way to get me to come to dinner. My dreams were filled with preview panes. Constant emails were controlling my life.
This is something I’ve learned to accept, and with the right tools, manage. I owe RescueTime a big thanks for opening my eyes. It helped me to see the real impact of IM and email on my time. I knew it was a drain, but didn’t realize just how much time it took up. Once I saw that, I decided to commit myself to staying away from them.
The problem is, when you’re working on 40 projects with many different teams, these tools are kind of necessary in this modern day and age. Especially when you’re all working remotely. You have to be able to communicate with people. Additionally, as someone who’s been a professional writer for 11 years, I can tell you most writers would say that constant distractions have a huge impact on the output speed and quality of their work. Every time you’re interrupted, it means re-finding your thought process. If you get interrupted at the wrong time, you might lose your idea before you have a chance to sketch it out.
I’m sure this happens in many fields. Being on my own, I no longer had those charming account managers to deal with client communications for me or marvelous traffic people to prioritize projects and keep me on schedule. I was scared, and it was cold, and I kept seeing emails everywhere I turned.
So, here’s what I did:
1. Separate work email. Like many people, I manage much of my work life through Gmail. However, since leaving my job 5 months ago to consult on my own, I had all email going to one Gmail inbox. Easier right? Well, for me the answer became a big NO. I had hundreds of emails coming in from various sources. So I removed my work account from my play account. Now, if I need to respond or send an email, I’m in a separate browser tab and I only deal with other work emails. It’s much easier to keep my inbox empty and I’m not distracted by emails from friends, updates, offers, or the latest and greatest of all time sucks — Buzz. When I do go into my personal account (once or twice a day), I can delete the hell out of everything and not worry about losing an important work email.
2. Keep IM closed. I’ll pop on for an hour or two here and there. But most of the time, IM seems to be comprised of questions people should take the time to think about themselves, ranting and raving, general buffoonery, or isolated work conversations that would be more useful to share with a group. 92.3% of IM time is not useful or productive. Especially in this economy, might I hasten to add, when some of your friends may be without jobs.
3. Use AwayFind.
AwayFind is just a sick tool and exactly what I needed. Basically, it uses IMAP protocols to connect with your email account(s).
The real power of AwayFind is found in the ability to set filters to be notified of important messages via email, IM, Twitter DM, text, or even voice message. You define the filters. Who do you want to instantly be alerted to a new message from and how would you like to be alerted?
When important messages come in, I can be alerted instantly via a separate, private IM account I use only for this purpose and share with no one. Now I have periods where I’ll avoid using general IM for days and avoid opening email for … well … hours.
But those are divine hours. And according to RescueTime, my productivity has shot way up. You don’t have to worry about constantly checking your inbox for an important message. If you step away from your desk, you can receive notifications via text. It’s really pretty awesome in my opinion. I can get my work done faster and earlier. Now my dogs are happy with me, dinner is delicious, and I only dream of competing in boardercross in the Olympics.
AwayFind is still in a limited beta. (Contact me if you want an invite, I still have a few.) While they’ve had the same number of small bugs that every startup experiences, AwayFind responds to them very quickly, provides great support, and simply seems to care.
It’s free for now. I won’t be surprised if they quickly move into a freemium/premium model once they iron everything out.
