Email Abstinence

I have now tried this out for a while--not having my gmail browser tab open all the time, switching off google-notifier, and only checking my email about 3 times a day (a bit more frequently when I actually have to write an email as part of doing a job).

I feel I am much more productive, get things done, and go home with all items on my daily to-do list crossed off (which is a great feeling!). And I have now just come across a piece on the BBC website where researchers say that constant email alerts disrupt disproportionally.

So far I don't miss it much. Occasionally I get a twinge, but can easily resist the urge to check. I'm always a bit shocked when I've got 10 new emails, as before they didn't mount up because I dealt with them as soon as they came up. Guess I have to get used to that...

Needless to say, I have also cut down on twitter and google reader, both of which I only check when I have time, eg when all my daily tasks are ticked off. Productivity Heaven!

A hard choice

I always have my browser up, and the first tab on the left is gmail (the second and third are google calendar and reader). I also have google notifier in my status bar, so that I can instantly see when somebody has sent me an email. And I check frequently if there is any.

Not any more. After reading an interesting blog post about time management, I have decided to change my ways. No more google email notifier (though I keep the calendar notifier up), no more open tab with gmail. No more instant replies.

It seems to me that this is a major drain on time (and interrupter of longer lasting tasks), and I will now aim to read my email (and respond to it) three times a day: morning, when I come into the office, lunch-time, when I have a break, and afternoon, before I'm ready to go. This means I won't be able to have on-going 'conversations' by email, and people will have to wait for replies longer, but I also hope it means I get more productive things done during the day.

As an email addict I don't know how long I will be able to keep this up, but I'm starting today!

Time for another habit...?

I'm really pleased with my daily 200+ words of writing, which I have managed to keep up so far. Even if it involved getting up in the middle of the night once, because I had just remembered that I hadn't written anything that day. I've written some 20,000+ words since starting it, and hopefully over the summer I will have some opportunities to turn that into some actual publications.

But now something else occurred to me. Writing is only part of the whole equation. You also need to read stuff, in order to a) get ideas for things to write about or research and b) know what other people are doing to either avoid duplication of mistakes or wheel-reinventions.

Since acquiring the Papers program, I have collected almost a thousand papers. But I haven't nearly read enough of them. Part of the hunter/gatherer or packrat mentality... Useful paper, will read it at some point when I've got time. Only, you never have time!

And here is the solution: apart from writing 200+ words every day (or spend 30 minutes editing), I will now do the same for reading research papers. I just need to work out what the best modus operandi is for that; clearly reading a paper every day might be useful but not feasible. One a week? Not really enough, probably. I think I'll settle for 30 minutes initially, and then see how much I can manage to read in that time. But it's not only reading, also post-processing. Keeping notes in some shape or form, probably a mind-map. Mmmh, this is more complicated than I initially imagined.

Anyway, starting from today I will try to read a research paper for at least 30 minutes every day!

Another Advantage of a Zero Inbox

I'm now increasingly checking my email from a mobile device, and having an empty inbox is very handy in this case: the built-in email client doesn't thread messages like gmail does, so even having only one conversation in your current inbox can already mean that you've got several screenfuls of emails cluttering up everything.

With your Zero Inbox (or was it 'Inbox Zero'?), if something crops up it is immediately visible as new, and in a nice case of a positive feedback loop you will want to deal with it quickly to get back to that pristine empty inbox.

And of course you have the satisfying blank page when there is no actual mail waiting for you...

Streaks

I got a new toy, which pretends to be a mobile phone but instead really runs lots of applications on it. One of them, which I installed today, is called Streaks. This is exactly what I need to keep up my writing: you get a little calendar, and tap a date (has to be in the past...). The program then puts a satisfying red X on the day, and counts how many days your current streak is. It maintains counts for the current streak and the longest. Ideally, of course, you will only have one streak!

For my own writing chain I only count work-days, so there'll be a bit of a break over the upcoming Easter hols. However, I can't tell that to the program, so I'll mark weekends and holidays as 'streaked'. The first consequence is that my 34 current links got puffed up to a massive 46, which is of course nice... And it makes it even harder to stop.

Today I was a bit stuck for what to write, and so I started a new project, one that I wanted to have started earlier anyway. With new projects it's a lot easier to write stuff, and if you do it during the mindless "have to write 200 words" stage of the day it saves you your more productive time to do the real work. At least that's the theory!

Don't break the chain!

There is a story attributed to Seinfeld which describes his strategy for writing jokes.  Not very remarkable, one might think, but the point of it is that it's something you need to do little and often.  But such tasks are often the first ones to fall under the table if there's any pressure or lack of time.  Always something more important takes precedence, and a month later you've completely forgotten that you ever used to do this 'writing' thing.

Academic writing is similar.  Due to teaching and admin (and other research) commitments, you rarely have the luxury of a full day free to do nothing but write.  So doing it little and often is really the only way forward.  This then brings us back to the Seinfeld story: how can we make sure to fit the writing in, and not forget about it?

The trick is to introduce some secondary motivation, which is stronger than the motivation required for simply writing something.  In this case you get a big calendar, and every day you do your writing, you mark this on the calendar.  After a few days you start getting a 'chain' of marks on the calendar, and your mission is to keep the chain uninterrupted.  Now the issue is no longer to 'write something', but more like 'don't let the long chain break', and it becomes more and more important the longer the chain is.

You need a clearly defined goal, so that you can be sure when you've done your daily deed.  I set it to at least 200 words; in a week this would give me 1000 words, and roughly 50,000 words in a whole year.  Obviously I won't stop if I can write more than 200, but that is the minimum.  I need to think about how to deal with post-editing, when I basically cut out words, so that should probably be as a period of time, eg half an hour or so.

The next step is to tell everybody.  It's a lot harder to break the chain if people who bump into you on the corridor ask how many links you've got.  And it might give them ideas about trying it themselves!

I started on Monday, and managed to keep up the chain for the whole week (I only count weekdays, not the week-end).  In the process I have produced about 5000 words (not including any blog posts); now where did that time come from?  The answer is, I'm more focused on my work.  Those little periods 'between things' are suddenly no longer wasted, because I always have 'MUST WRITE' at the front of my thoughts.  Just because I don't want to have to tell anybody that I broke the chain.