A mind as cluttered as a hard drive. A common problem for developers, which is why that community has latched on to productivity-improving methods. This week, I tried a few.
Email on a diet
“Hi friend! Sorry, I missed your email. Either I mistakenly deleted it or it just got lost in the shuffle. But that’s not important. The only thing that matters is I’m here now….”
That’s my stock response to friends when I miss emails. It smooths over any grievances about my non-reply.
But that strategy can’t work forever. So I experimented with the famous Inbox Zero, the message management system where you keep your inbox clear of any email at all times.
This means you have to delete or move all old emails into folders. Basically, you have to deal with every message that comes in when it comes in. Your inbox should be perpetually empty, with all your read and sent emails neatly organized in folders.
The idea comes from Merlin Mann, who’s made a career out of his empty inbox. He calls it action-based email. “I’m writing a book about Inbox Zero,” he says, slated for 2011, “which you may have heard of. If you have, you’re probably sick of it.”
He’s right. Inbox Zero feels like the South Beach Diet, a passing fad that may temporarily slim down your inbox, but soon enough you’ll gain everything back with a vengeance.
When I used Mann’s Inbox Zero, it merely spread my emails over an unruly number of folders. Eventually, I forgot which folder contained which emails. (Finding a dinner invite from a friend at work meant checking folders for “invites,” “work” and “friends,” only to see it afterwards in a “work friends” folder.)
I pared down the folders to “needs reply” and “replied,” but both were as haphazard as my unfiltered inbox. I spent more time moving emails around than writing them, and moving emails is a feeble way to spend your time. (My solution: the ingenious Send & Archive function in Gmail Labs. Look into it!)
Catch up on tasks
As a university student in Rome, Francesco Cirillo had trouble focusing. Not helping was the anxiety he felt as time slipped away with every break he took.
Using an everyday kitchen timer, he carved up his study time into 25-minute blocks. After 25, he’d take a break, on the assumption that his brain required a rest every 25 minutes, and then move on to a different subject.
He called these blocks of time “pomodoros,” Italian for tomatoes, named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer he used. Cirillo’s style became the Pomodoro Technique.
Of all the non-software productivity tools, this one is the most sensible. It doesn’t require mad documentation or physically moving stuff around. Cirillo even offers his book as a free download.
I’ve considered taking this one to the next level and walking out of meetings that take longer than 25 minutes. “Sorry, I’m on Pomodoro time!”
Doing things
Getting Things Done is the cult book that inspired almost all forms of life hacking, including Gawker’s Life Hacker website.
In 2002, author David Allen urged everyone to document. Record all your tasks, big and small, on a list and cross them off when you’re done.
What many of us already call to-do lists, Allen calls next-action lists. Each item is not only an action but a concrete action. Instead of “get a new job,” it would be “find resumé,” “write cover letter,” “go to LinkedIn” and so on.
The feeling of fulfillment as you cross off each easy task propels you on to the next. The endgame is an empty mind, when all your tasks vamoose off your list and out of your mind.
Dismantling individual projects into manageable bits makes it all easier.
However, the goal of Zen – emptying your mind – is creepy, especially considering Allen’s connection to a church called Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness.
Getting Things Done may have little to do with that seemingly harmless New Age church. But if you live life always aiming for an empty mind, does life not become an endless series of cluttering tasks? Isn’t the point of all this productivity to not feel like that?
joshuae@nowtoronto.com
