I find it fascinating to learn about how others use technology in their lives so today, I present: how retrieve and process email.
First off, I’m not a GTD person, that sounds all fine and dandy but really doesn’t work so well for me. I DO try to stay organized but let’s be honest, I work with and in the technology business and things change fast.
In an upcoming post I’ll share what my to do list looks like (hint, I use Remember The Milk and I recommend you do too).
Let’s get started journalism style:
Who: I use email primarily for business purposes. My work account gets the largest percentage of email of all of my accounts. Written communication between friends mostly happens via text message and Facebook (I wish there was a way to reply to Facebook messages via email, just so that they could all be archived by Gmail.)
When:I check personal email very shortly after I wake up in the morning, usually I just delete everything because it’s newsletters I no longer want or site/script errors. I may also take a moment to glance at my work account and get a preview of anything that may have happened over night. (no replies, I just read the headlines at this point.)
Like many people, one of the first things I do after booting up my work PC is check and respond to email. where possible I close the loop on any outstanding messages from the previous day. My goal is to keep my inbox at 30-50 messages at any given time. This isn’t quite Inbox Zero, but it’s close enough for me.
Work email is of course on an Exchange server which means no tagging, no auto archive of all mail, and horrible searching. Why is this still the case? Just like Google sets the standard for web searching, Gmail sets the standard for Email.
As urgent emails come in through the day I go ahead and respond, but most messages are replied o near lunch, and again around 4-5 pm before heading home for the day.
So there you have it! It’s not a secret any longer, I check email just like everyone else. My only gripe, the office won’t let me check my work email on my iPhone, I have to use the webmail interface for Outlook which we all know is horrible.
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