Views of a Modern World

Everything else Rick writes

Twitter: “What is it good for?”

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As someone who’s only more recently adopted Twitter as a tool, building on top of multiple blogs, Facebook, and LinkedIn, I’ve been consistently faced with two questions:

  1. Is there a specific model for using twitter that makes the most of the tool?
  2. How can folks following hundreds (thousands!) of people get anything done other than read tweets all day?

Question 1

Geoff Managh, of BldgBlog, writes on question #1 and answers the pre-complaint: who wants to read that stuff?
He urges us to separate the tool from the work; that ballpoint pens and twitter are just as capable of capturing (NB: not “producing” like some robot Bartleby) quality writing as moleskines and MS Word. That said, he defaults to a simple position: twitter is a note-taking tool and you can write what’s important to you. There’s less difference between me reading a WSJ editorial that I disagree with and a tweet that bores me; if the content isn’t interesting, we’re supposed to stop reading it, the same way we do with books, magazines, articles, editorials, blog posts, and emails. Notice a trend?

I have recently decided that the microblogging description of twitter might be the real secret sauce here. Once upon a time, there were these things called weblogs, and many of them were like personal online diaries or journals. Eventually, as people are wont to do, some of these weblog-ers started writing more interesting things, and people liked to read those posts. And then it continued. And some of you might have even recognized that we now have blogs and bloggers and no one automatically things that these are a fortiori silly things to do. We now note that well-written blog posts are closer to newspaper columns than the online “dear diary.” Since twitter works over SMS as well, and many people don’t have full-fledged blogs or even carry laptops and smartphones with them everywhere, maybe democratizing access is an important piece of the story. People will find their voices. That’s not a bad thing.

Question 2

I’m hoping to get a mini-interview with Darren Rowse of Problogger to expand on his recent tweets on how he manages the 37,828 people he’s following and his 57,965 followers (as of 1445 Eastern Time on 4/28).

That post will be part II of this mini-twitter series.

Use self-BCC to tame your sent folder

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Over on Simplifying Complexity, I recently doubled one of our software bounties from $250 to $500.

Here’s a deeper background on the topic:

Unlike people who use their sent items folder as a giant bucket to keep track of things they sent to people, I prefer to BCC myself and then file the actual email I sent in the proper folder. Using  the sent folder in this way and then also separate folders (however many) confuses me in part because I’m a folder guy, not a pile guy when it comes to saving emails. As for the actual sent folder, I just delete everything in it.
Another advantage of the BCC vs. just checking the sent folder is a clearer signal, easier to track in my workflow, that an email actually went out than switching back to the sent folder to check. If I bcc myself on something that I actually don’t need to keep, I just delete it. Deleting emails is part of my normal workflow in the inbox; if that email were part of sent mail, it would just be extra garbage in the pile.
My sense is that my preference for folders is a probable  aftereffect of keeping legal client emails separated as much as possible to avoid inadvertent disclosures.
Certainly, better search tools, whether from gmail, Outlook, or Xobni, have improved the viability of the pile/bucket method. Fewer places to file things makes it faster to handle email, and better search reduces the need to separate things so much upfront. I’m slowly moving toward fewer buckets, and there are still some things that will have to be segregated. For example, I expect to slowly transition to this general framework:
  • Marketing/networking (all “keeping in touch” that doesn’t get put into folders for Pam, the boys, and my brother/sister-in-law/twin nieces).
  • ASD will be a new folder to collect autism-related items, separated into REED, Dylan, 30seats, and client-specific folders (same rationale as above).
  • Under a “Business” folder, I’ll track these:
  1. Client/project-specific folders
  2. Admin for everything that is business admin-related and doesn’t go elsewhere.
  • Nonprofit for my work on various charitable efforts (including Allegheny and other autism efforts)
  • Usernames to keep password emails all in one place. (Still seems easier to find that FedEx username without having to look through tracking notices.)
  • Z-Quicken for everything that’s an e-receipt, order confirmation, or payment (I use the “Z-” prefix to keep it at the bottom of the list).

Putting the list down on paper does make me feel happy about the impending reorganization. As for waiting-fors, actions, etc., we use the NetCentrics GTD plug-in for Outlook, so it creates a few extra folders. My biggest reason for not putting stuff in an “action” folder for emails that have to be checked is the sense, proven by my experience, that I will ignore that bucket and it just becomes another black hole. Things need to be handled, and my goal is to use the plugin to take emails with embedded tasks and turn them into actual tasks rather than move them to a different pile.

As I scan the inbox now, there are 187 messages, 2 unread. 1 is a furniture ad I’ll delete shortly and one is a BCC from me. There are probably 30 messages related to a blast I sent out yesterday related to Dylan’s CBS appearance. I’ll get caught up on those today and get back down to 100 by COB today. The rest that require more work: I recognize that I need to frame them into tasks, and I want that burden right in front of me, whether it’s things to read, track, or respond to. In many cases, for those items where I’m writing things such as this post, I prefer to just handle them by writing the post (or at least starting it and adding a link) rather than going through an intermediate step of creating a “BLOG xyz” task in Outlook. (I promise I’ll break that habit soon!)

In any event, I thought that this brief explanation will be helpful to some of you. My recommendation is that you consider attending one of People-OnTheGo’s “Total Organization” workshops by my colleague Pierre. The ToolsMap (™) is absolutely amazing, and even now, years later, I think it’s terrain completely untouched by anyone else in the productivity field.

Deflect “pre-distractions” before they steal focus

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Lifehacker recently highlighted a “tangent log” idea from another writer. I thought the concept sounded familiar and realized that my colleague Pierre has long included the “Add to to-do list” page as part of the journal he discusses in his “Accomplishing More with Less” workshops.

I’m slowly migrating toward using a paper journal (Moleskine Ruled Notebook Large, with a nice leather cover) as an adjunct my tablet and Blackberry Pearl. (I’ll skip the gory details on those for a later post on tools & tricks of the trade.) While I’ve learned in Outlook to simply create a quick task for the blips and beeps of everyday intrusions, Pierre’s model is to create a dedicated space on your working pages to make it simpler to note what’s starting to intrude on your brain and handle it enough to let it slip away without stealing your focus. I suppose David Allen would use a post-it (I recently read an interview where he was jotting on a post-it in the middle of answering a question. No link handy at all.)

What techniques have you used to handle pre-distractions so that they aren’t lost but don’t destroy your concentration?

Zero-effort time-saver: sugar packets

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The “zero-effort” time-saver series is a collection of short tips that I actually use to save time and be more productive. The key is things that are actually useful, cost basically nothing, and don’t take huge amounts of effort to implement.

First up: tear your sugar packets along the long side rather than the short side. The sugar dumps out more rapidly, which is the big time lag with sugar. If you drink 4 cups of a tea when spending a Saturday morning in Starbucks like I do, you might save a minute or so.

What’s a minute? Well, if I do that every week, it’s an hour. And, if it’s wasted, what’s the point of that? I reject the framing of the issue that says I have to justify saving a minute (again, with no effort and no cost); I say “why should I waste that minute?”