Fork 6 | The Essentials to be Productive in 2022 | Email & Account Mgmt

Last time, we went over the definition of competency, the whole pyramid on a high level and the first two levels which are basic to everybody working mainly with a computer.

The following Forks will detail the “Essential” level a bit and give explanations of the different methods to improve your output related to knowledge. If you want to skip one of the methods, fair enough. Focus on the ones which might make a difference for you.

Today, we will talk about why as well as how to keep control of your mailbox, passwords & accounts.

Introduction

Let me make it more comprehensible with a simplification of what output means:

Output = Time / Effort

As time is not really a variable but a fixum, you need to minimize effort as the variable in a fixed unit of time to maximize your output. Effort, by the way, can further be thought of as a product of

• Skill in an area and
• Variety of areas

which means that the more skills you acquire in different areas of expertise while improving your skill level in a particular area, you will need less effort to put out a result in any unit of time.

The basic meaning of my blabla is: Just remember that curiosity is good. 😁✌🏼

Inbox Zero+ - The solution to Mail overload

Mail overload has become a major problem in today's society. The average person receives 121 emails per day, and this number is only increasing (eBay, 2018). This can lead to feelings of anxiety, stress, and even depression (Rosen, 2013). The knowledge worker spends 28 % of their time reading, writing & responding to email (McKinsey Global Institute, 2012).

But it is not only impacting our productivity stack. It also impacts our psychology. Quoting [[Cal Newport]] (A World Without Email, 2021):

To study the effects of e-mail, a team led by researchers from the University of California, Irvine, hooked up forty office workers to wireless heart-rate monitors for around twelve days. They recorded the subjects’ heart-rate variability, a common technique for measuring mental stress. They also monitored the employees’ computer use, which allowed them to correlate e-mail checks with stress levels. What they found would not surprise the French. “The longer one spends on email in [a given] hour the higher is one’s stress for that hour,” the authors noted.

I think the negative impacts can be minimized by tackling the laziness of people (includes missing skills) and misusage of the communication channel. I mean by “misusage” a couple of points which have emerged within the last 10-20 years:

• Younger generations prefer non-personal communication channels. Therefore, they don’t call anymore but text.
• This leads to more and more asynchronous communication which leads to more time invested on a single task
• Additionally, writing an email gives you the (non-real) advantage that somebody else is now responsible to take an action

The concept Inbox Zero was one of the solutions to this problem. It is a system created by Merlin Mann, that helps you take control of your Inbox (Mann, 2007) based on the principles of David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) system (Allen, 2001).

“Why should I care?” you may ask. There are so many advantages to it:

• You always stay on top of things. You are always aware of the latest exchange/news.
• You are always in control of interactions.
• You will impress people with the speed of your responses.
• You won’t feel anxious anymore about your pile of unread emails anymore.
• You will invest 20 min per day into mailing and that’s it.

The list goes on and on. In the end, the most convincing argument is still the most relevant: It is part of your job and therefore your responsibility.

So, what is Inbox Zero?

Inbox Zero is a system that keeps your inbox it at zero (Mann, 2007).

The system is based on the following principles:

1. Your Inbox is not a to-do list
2. Process your Inbox regularly
3. Handle each email only once
4. Make a decision about each email
5. Keep your Inbox at zero

I disagree partially with this approach. The reason is not because the principles don’t make sense in general but because they don’t make sense to me. For sure, I follow point 2 and 4 but with so many email-addresses and different topics to manage, it is hard to follow point 1, 3 and 5 fully. Hence, I created my own way of managing emails which I call Zero+.

Let me just highlight again: Only because it works for me, it does not necessarily mean that it needs to work for you. The point I am trying to make is that you need to have a solution for the topic, in this case Email.

However, here is how I personally handle it.

How to apply Inbox Zero+

My Inbox contains always below 10 emails. Otherwise, I would not be able to sleep a night, feeling anxious about missing an information or forgetting an action I wanted to take.

What do I mean by below 10? Let me explain: First thing in the morning (and in busy times, last thing in the day), I go through all my emails - work and private - with a short, intuitive review process:

1. I go through them chronologically (oldest → newest)
2. I open all of them

1. If it is not relevant to me, I archive it right away (shortcut: e)
2. If it seems like a complex activity is attached to it or it is very long, I will mark it as “unread” and go to the next one (shortcut: shift + u)
3. If it is relevant but simple, I will respond right away (shortcut: a or r)

1. When I am done, I will read the complex ones or block a spot during the day to read them carefully (marked as unread before, so sticking out)

1. From there, I will write down in action if needed and book it into my calendar

Why is it not at zero? Well, let’s say that there is never an unread mail in my inbox. But I am keeping most of the time 5-10 mails in my inbox (without being archived) contrary to the original principles:

• Either as I use some as a to-do or
• as a reminder for emails I am expecting a response to.

This scenario is what the + in Zero+ is for.

The same principle is valid for your calendar: Keep it clean!

Let me keep it short and simple:

• Create reoccurring blockers for your weekly & daily procedures (like cleaning your inbox)
• Open your calendar Monday morning

• Create blockers for Focus Time related to concrete work packages
• Create blockers for relevant preparations of meetings/presentations

• Have your note-taking tool always open and create a brain dump area where you write down everything that still needs to be done

By the way, modern digital calendars adapt your status in communication tools like Slack, Google Chat or Teams to whatever is in your calendar. So, others can see when you are on site, online, in a meeting, in focus time or absent.

Talking about those tools…

The same principle is valid for your chat

Understand that chat can be used for two different purposes:

• ping somebody if the person is available
• get simple-to-medium questions answered quickly
• get brief information from somebody
• have private conversations with your colleagues

If your organization really adopted the usage of spaces or other topics-related channels, then there might also be use cases like

• sharing news or major milestones on a specific topic and
• ask questions to a broader audience (like a forum or expert group)

Password/Account Mgmt. - Understand how accesses work

I find it to be astounding how many people start their job or new contract with a new client and wait for somebody to tell them which tools to use and how to get access. Let me make something clear: We (mostly) work with generations who are spoiled “to the gills”. Hence, proactivity, meaning doing something which makes sense without someone telling/asking you to do it is an absolute superpower.

So, next time you start somewhere new: Ask a competent person about all the tools and access rights which might be of interest/use to you. And then find out how to get access to them.

• Is it based on coarse or fine-grained access rights?
• Do you need to request it with a service management tool?
• Do you need to ask a specific person to get added?
• Do you need to be part of a specific group?

Then, the next steps are to create the accounts. There was a time, when you might have been overwhelmed with accounts, passwords and stuff like that. But since we have password managers, this time is over. Everybody needs a password manager and at least two-factor-authentication for all his work and private-related internet-based stuff. Everything else is irresponsible nowadays.

If you work in a corporate environment, I hope that SSO is the standard form of authentication. What is SSO?

SSO means “Single-Sign-On” which you might know from Apple or Google products: You have a pair of credentials (Username + password + second factor) but can use multiple services with it without always logging in again. Two well-known examples are:

• Google: GMail, GDrive, Calendar, etc.
• Apple: iCloud, Mail, App Store, etc.

The only thing you should have offline in writing are the so-called “Backup Codes” or phrases which enable you to recover an account after forgetting the password and not being able to produce/access a token via mail (or better via second factor authentication).

Outro

Next episode is the last one, where we will dive into the rest of the Essentials Layer:

• Advanced Note-Taking
• Advanced Communication Mgmt.
• Time Tracking

See you on the other side!