Posts from 2006

A long journey starts with a single step...

I was curious about applying the concepts and ideas behind GTD to try to manage my time (both at home and at work) more efficiently so I read up a little about GTD over the weekend and actually ordered a copy of Dave Allen's book (having read snippets in a bookshop who were nice enough to give me a nice leather armchair for my comfort).

I found a lot of good information and interesting ideas at 43 Folders and Lifehacker.

I then heeded the very advice I was slightly disparaging about in a previous article and moved absolutely everything (over 6,000 messages) from my fat, bloated Inbox into a new DMZ folder.

I even spent some time trawling through the dusty, old, antique messages. As I suspected, the vast majority were well past their sell-by date and could be safely deleted immediately. Then I started to detect patterns; if I didn't recognise the author/subject, then it was pretty likely that the complete thread was no longer relevant and could be deleted. Similarly, some authors simply have nothing of interest to say ever; mostly automatons but sometimes human. The DMZ folder was trimmed to less than 400 messages and the whole exercise must have taken less than two hours (and not four days).

Some authors send me valuable technical content (mixed with some dross) so their messages had to be selectively pruned or all messages left intact and a action created to conduct a second pass.

So, today, Monday 9 January 2006, saw the dawn of my new email handling strategy.

If the message contains technical content of interest, it gets immediately filed as 'Reference'. Some messages contain interesting technical content that merits further investigation. This is normally some bold assertions that are unproven or not understood by me (not hard). These lead to an action 'To do sometime'.

If I replied to an email asking for more information, I would delete the incoming message and create a corresponding task in 'Waiting'. The original email thread is accessible from the 'Sent' folder.

I treated any email with an attachment quite specifically. If the attachment was relevant, I separated the attachment which was then filed on the file system. In most cases, the email could be deleted as the information was contained in the accompanying document.

If an email purely provides contact details (name, address, email, phone) etc, I immediately add the contact to my address book. Sometimes, if I am travelling in the near future, I will also print a hard copy so I know where I am going, who I am seeing and where I am sleeping as this always helps.

A couple of messages to lesser used email aliases just needed an new filter rule defining so that this content is automatically routed to a dedicated folder and only spends a few fleeting seconds in the 'Inbox' and my consciousness.

Similarly, I chose to unsubscribe from marketing messages from companies or if I really do want the information automatically filter those messages to a dedicated folder.

The net result is that I now get far fewer messages in my Inbox so it is easier and quicker to process them and the messages that do arrive in my Inbox are far more relevant to me.

So now I look at each email message on arrival. Well that's not quite true. I have started to turn email off if I am working on something that needs concentration to avoid the continual interruption and context switching as I am easily distracted.

Close of play. Inbox - 3. All messages that need to be acted on tomorrow.

Have a look at this blog. Lots of interesting, varied material, frequently updated, nicely presented, excellent use of images, easy to navigate, searchable, well structured and very professional looking. All in all, an excellent blog.

This blog is by Paul Stamatiou, a 19 year old student. A few months ago, I happened across this article on Paul's blog when I first started blogging but stupidly forgot to bookmark it.

This is undoubtedly one of the best personal blogs I have seen. In fact, I was so impressed I did as he suggested and nominated Paul's blog for the 'Best Teen Blog' award.

Paul is looking for a job this summer. Somehow, I don't think he will have any trouble getting fixed up.

Those busy people at WordPress have opened up a couple of forums for support issues and feedback for users of WordPress.com

This is a brilliant idea as I currently have to use the 'Feedback' form for all my brilliant suggestions and reporting minor glitches which was a little lonely and uni-directional.

Dear Cathy and Clare

I am increasingly worried about the size of my Inbox. I am almost embarrassed to admit this but it currently has 6,207 items dating from way back September 2003 (and that doesn't even include 'Archived Folders'). Tom Kyte (who I admire and respect greatly) likes to keep everything in its place, spic and spotlessly span and currently has a single item sitting in his Inbox. And his finger is poised over the 'Delete' button to expunge that one too !

A very organised chap, who knows all about GTD, recommends creating a brand new shiny, empty folder called 'DMZ' and moving all the 6,207 messages into there. Apparently, this single action will produce the illusion of an empty Inbox, produce an enormous sense of well being and contentment (well until the next email arrives in 12 seconds), help me feel better about myself, shed two stones overnight, make friends and influence people, lift a massive psychological burden from my shoulders, help me to get things done, focus on the key objectives for 2006 and finally get that long awaited promotion.

However, I am a little reluctant to trust someone masquerading under the name of '43 Folders'. If he is so clever, why does he even need 43 folders and, more to the point, how many messages are in each one ? Enquiring minds want to know. Also, simply dumping my beloved email archives into a demilitarised zone would fill me with guilt. I would hate to think of all those technical nuggets, match reports, humorous anecdotes, sizable attachments, funny photos, jokes, customer testimonials (I am sure there is one buried in there) and managerial approvals that would be sitting unloved in the 'DMZ' folder.

In my heart, I know that I really should put aside four days to review all of those 6,207 messages and treat them appropriately. Most could be deleted, some would merit moving into a dedicated folder, that one from last summer about ergonomics in the workplace might look nice printed out and pinned above my desk and a minuscule rump would be left to help me get focused on what is really important in my life and genuinely needs to get done.

However, if I were to set the time aside doing this administrative task, I simply wouldn't be able to get anything done.

As Joseph Heller once said: 'There was only one catch and that was catch 22'

Disorganised of London

PS. The count has now increased to 6,213

Oracle have released Raptor (a freely available GUI SQL query tool) which may be of interest to those of you who use Toad or are frustrated with the terseness of the SQL*Plus interface.

Raptor is primarily a cross platform, PL/SQL developer tool, written in Java (60 MB download). The SQL output is a scrollable grid (like Toad) and there is the standard schema browser, PL/SQL debugger, SQL pretty printer, DDL generator and a graphical interface to explain plan for query tuning.

All in all, a very promising release which fills a surprising (to me) gap in Oracle's range of database products.