When you’ve made real commitments that add up to 100%+ of the time/mental energy you have available, how do you deal with it? I’m in that situation at the moment and find myself debating whether to concentrate on one thing, get it done (while other things fall by the wayside and/or miss deadlines, causing a backlog to pile up), or continue making small progress on many fronts, but not finishing anything.
Or perhaps there are other ways? What are your thoughts?
As you probably know, I’ve launched my You Are Not Your Inbox, so I’m revisiting some of my old thoughts about Email Overload.
Tim Sanders wrote a blog entry that references a Business Week article (“What’s So Bad about Information Overload?”) on information overload I commented on last week. The writer suggests that information overload might be good. There might be some valuable information, and besides, young people can handle it just fine.
Sure. In what universe? My Get-it-Done Guy podcast email and people’s reaction to my
What is Email Costing You Assessment, suggest many people of us feel our life force being regularly sucked from our bodies by information overload. It makes us jump from topic to topic. It interrupts us when we need to concentrate. And then we feel guilty that we still can’t keep up. Gee, that sounds like a resourceful emotional state for reaching our goals.
Yes, we’re getting more info. Yes, some of it’s useful. But that’s not the point! We need to ask: is it useful enough? Are the benefits—financial, social, or emotional—worth the cost?
For Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy (mentioned in the article), the answer is Yes. In email, they say things they would never say otherwise. Like that comment about the chocolate mousse, telephone pole, and garter belt. Who would ever say that out loud?
Of course, an anonymous suggestion box would fill the same function. Even better, the tipster could actually include the original garter belt. But apparently, those emails are amazing enough that Anne devotes a lot of time to her email. Since she’s gotten great results at Xerox, for her, the benefits might be worth the cost. (Assuming, of course, that her success is because of email, rather than in spite of it. Maybe a weekly suggestion box would be just as good.)
If you’re top dog, no one pays attention to how you use your time as long as you produce business results. The rest of us aren’t so lucky. Our pointy-haired boss gives us specific goals, and email can suck up a lot of time without moving us towards our real goals. That “Top 10 Reasons Working Here Sucks” email will only help you reach your goal if that goal is a new job at your major competitor’s firm.
When you’re deciding how much time to spend with your inbox, think long and hard about the benefits you’re getting. After all, there’s lots you could be doing with that time. Ask yourself if there is any other way to get those same benefits? If you hired a $50/hour assistant to read and answer your email every day, what would you tell him/her to process versus ignore? Are you following those same guidelines?
Being perfect in every way, I follow my own advice and am ultra careful with my email habits. Even so, I often get sucked in for up to 30 extra minutes a day. Since I’m perfect, that must be the perfect amount of time to waste. But there’s still a nagging feeling: that comes out to three weeks per year. If I’m going to spend three weeks a year blathering mindlessly, I’d rather do it wearing a bathing suit on a sunny Caribbean beach than sitting hunched over my computer in my basement office, looking like one of the Mole People. At least on the beach, I might get a tan.
So don’t take my word for it. Don’t take Tim Sanders’s word for it. And don’t take Business Week’s word for it. Your email time is productive to the extent it helps you get what you want out of life. Hold it to a high standard and if it isn’t performing, drop it from your life faster than that stalker you accidentally dated in college. With email, only you can take control; there’s no way to get a restraining order.
We take it for granted that making things easier is always a good thing. I disagree. Sometimes it is, while sometimes it isn’t. Today, I’ve been contemplating the case where maybe it’s good to make things harder.
Technology has made it so that anyone can produce music or publish books. This is a very good thing, in that it means people driven by the desire to do those things can now do them far more economically. But there’s a downside to technology that enables: it drives the supply of those goods up, without necessarily driving demand up. More supply without more demand means prices will fall. In both arenas—neither of which have been famous for paying creators very much money—we’re seeing so much content being created that it’s hard for anyone to make a living anymore. The very few who manage to rise above the fray capture most of the money, and everyone else has to work as a waiter to get by.
In some abstract way, this may be good for the consumer by giving the consumer more choice (though the book The Paradox of Choice discusses about a dozen reasons why more choice is not necessarily good). But there’s now so much noise in the market that matching that consumer with the perfect author/musician is harder than ever. Unless the musician/author is one of the winners with a huge marketing budget, the consumers will never find them.
There may actually be benefits to markets that are somewhat harder to enter. Fewer players enter, but the ones who do can make enough money to make a living, and the number of entrants is low enough that consumers can at least have a decent shot at discovering the product that’s best for them.
Wow! Today’s a day full of media love. An article about my book and personal productivity is featured in Investors Business Daily. A guest blog post by me is featured in the Downtown Women’s Club.
There are two kinds of being overwhelmed. There’s the chaos that comes from having no systems, so everything is an emergency. That’s relatively easy to deal with. The more pernicious type of overwhelm happens when you actually commit to more than you can possibly do. Then, no matter what you try, you can never catch up.
My current Yahoo! HotJobs column discusses how to make sure you’re not fundamentally overcommitted. You can read my HotJobs column on how to stop overcommitting by clicking here.
I’m overloaded! Yes, it happens to me, too
The problem happens when I take on a new project, here’s a delay in the project (e.g. I’m waiting for someone to get me a document), and during that delay, I start something new. Once the delay is over, I now have two projects on my plate that together take up more time than I have.
So I’m in the midst of re-examining how I use my time and space. When you are examining your own life, how do you decide what to drop and what to keep? If everything on your plate is related to one of your goals, how do you choose which stays and which goes?
Do you have some priorities that are constant (“Family always comes first”)? Do your priorities change? Why and how?
I’ve noticed that each year, I choose new constant priorities. For example, this year health is a huge theme. My workouts and health commitments have consciously dominated everything. But other priorities change according to my projects.
Insights appreciated!
Tim Sanders wrote a blog entry that references a Business Week article on information overload I commented on last week. The writer suggests that information overload might be good. There might be some valuable information, and besides, young people can handle it just fine.
Sure. In what universe? My Get-it-Done Guy podcast email and people’s reaction to my what is email costing you assessment, suggest many people of us feel our life force being regularly sucked from our bodies by information overload. It makes us jump from topic to topic. It interrupts us when we need to concentrate. And then we feel guilty that we still can’t keep up. Gee, that sounds like a resourceful emotional state for reaching our goals.
Yes, we’re getting more info. Yes, some of it’s useful. But that’s not the point! We need to ask: is it useful enough? Are the benefits—financial, social, or emotional—worth the cost?
For Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy (mentioned in the article), the answer is Yes. In email, they say things they would never say otherwise. Like that comment about the chocolate mousse, telephone pole, and garter belt. Who would ever say that out loud?
Of course, an anonymous suggestion box would fill the same function. Even better, the tipster could actually include the original garter belt. But apparently, those emails are amazing enough that Anne devotes a lot of time to her email. Since she’s gotten great results at Xerox, for her, the benefits might be worth the cost. (Assuming, of course, that her success is because of email, rather than in spite of it. Maybe a weekly suggestion box would be just as good.)
If you’re top dog, no one pays attention to how you use your time as long as you produce business results. The rest of us aren’t so lucky. Our pointy-haired boss gives us specific goals, and email can suck up a lot of time without moving us towards our real goals. That “Top 10 Reasons Working Here Sucks” email will only help you reach your goal if that goal is a new job at your major competitor’s firm.
When you’re deciding how much time to spend with your inbox, think long and hard about the benefits you’re getting. After all, there’s lots you could be doing with that time. Ask yourself if there is any other way to get those same benefits? If you hired a $50/hour assistant to read and answer your email every day, what would you tell him/her to process versus ignore? Are you following those same guidelines?
Being perfect in every way, I follow my own advice and am ultra careful with my email habits. Even so, I often get sucked in for up to 30 extra minutes a day. Since I’m perfect, that must be the perfect amount of time to waste. But there’s still a nagging feeling: that comes out to three weeks per year. If I’m going to spend three weeks a year blathering mindlessly, I’d rather do it wearing a bathing suit on a sunny Caribbean beach than sitting hunched over my computer in my basement office, looking like one of the Mole People. At least on the beach, I might get a tan.
So don’t take my word for it. Don’t take Tim Sanders’s word for it. And don’t take Business Week’s word for it. Your email time is productive to the extent it helps you get what you want out of life. Hold it to a high standard and if it isn’t performing, drop it from your life faster than that stalker you accidentally dated in college. With email, only you can take control; there’s no way to get a restraining order.
Is Social Networking a Tragedy of the Commons?
I’m starting to think so. They’re pretty cool. They let you share yourself and your life with your friends. You find out more about them, they find out more about you, you swap cool stuff. Life is good.
And therein lies the problem. Life is so good that everyone is saying, “Gee, let’s start a social networking sites.” So more start. Then the originals come up with cool ideas, plug-ins, upload-your-address-books, etc. so everyone will stay on those original sites. They make it really easy for all their members to invite still more members.
The Commons here is any given member’s free time to spend doing social networking. At this point, I’m on Friendster, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and some “friends” have uploaded my name to Plaxo and Cardscan, who are now clamoring for attention.
The problem is that I enjoy social networking, but six sites? Give me a break. I’m lucky to have 10 minutes a day for these sites. Unlike many of my 21st century counterparts, I like doing things in the real world(*), which limits my online time.
Sadly, I’m now at the point where I ignore many new friend requests. I ignore it when my friends send me a “vampire bite” or electronically “chest thump” me. It would be fun to play, but there’s just too much coming at once. Picking and choosing is a necessity.
As more and more players decide that building community is the way to go, people will either ignore new communities or will have to devote less and less time to more and more communities … thus making those communities more shallow and less satisfying.
Where will it end? I’m curious to find out. My guess is that over time, we’ll have a couple of major social networking sites. The smaller sites will die off, and a few specialized communities will stick around. But which will vanish and which will survive? If you’re smart enough to figure that one out, give me a clue so I can buy stock today.
(*) How ironic is this for a kid whose social life was exclusively online until age 16, in an era when no one was online, so I was endlessly teased about it.
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Loved Nora Ephron’s take on email today. You can find it at http://SteverRobbins.com/r/m1nog.
Ok, so I’ve been totally busy the last few weeks. I’ve been traveling, and a thousand little things have backed up and consumed my time. I’m lunching, working, running errands, starting some great new business relationships … everything except my high-thought projects. My newsletter, a white paper I’m writing, and a proposal are all receiving short shrift. My dry cleaner, though? She’s seen me twice in the last two days.
So today will be a focus day. I will shut off my email, turn off my phone, and set all my little “to do”s aside. Then I’ll walk around a bit, stretch and get my mind in gear, and do to activities that require focus.
Be good to yourself. If you need to focus, take a day now and then and really give yourself that time. You’ll be glad you did.