Studio Non Troppo

Photo: IsaacMao

Spam is a hassle, no argument there. But many people suffer under the weight of a growing email inbox, and the messages piling up there aren’t spam. They’re emails that need answers, or emails that provide reminders of pieces of projects that need to get done, or emails that just haven’t found their way into the right folder to be filed away.

Frequently the emails there are there only because the user can’t even remember exactly what they’re about…and isn’t sure if they can be deleted safely.

I know someone who has thousands of emails in her inbox. I can’t say it makes her more productive.

Five years ago, Lawrence Lessig declared email bankruptcy because he was hopelessly behind on responding to his email.

Many others have followed suit, some simply deleting all their messages and starting again.

I must admit, I’m tempted in this direction for my university email account, where I find most crises emerge, blossom, and resolve themselves without need for any input from me. But for email accounts that relate to actual, productive work, I’ve found a less drastic solution.

Simply put, I incorporate all my email into my Getting Things Done system.

• If an email requires a response, and if it takes less than two minutes to send the response, then I deal with the email right away (assuming I have the two minutes) and then delete it or file it in my single reference folder. It takes less time and effort to deal with the email immediately than it would take to keep track of it and take care of it later.
• If the email requires an action that will take longer than two minutes, I put it in my action required folder temporarily and add it to my Getting Things Done system as necessary when I have time. Once I’ve added it to my system, I delete it or file it in my single reference folder.
• If the email will be useful for reference, I file it in my single reference folder.
• If I know I won’t need to respond or act or refer to the email later, I delete it.

On my Mac, I use the clever add-on to my Mail program, Mail Act-On, which allows me to file and mark emails with just a keystroke or two. I keep my Getting Things Done system purring along using OmniFocus and iCal. My paper filing system is in two file cabinets, my electronic filing system is DevonThink Pro Office, and my carry-along inbox is comprised of a small Scully Leather blank book and a Fisher Space Pen.

Yes, it took me a while to get Getting Things Done to this point, but the benefits are worth it. My inbox, fast as it may fill up, is usually empty by the end of the day, with everything responded to, filed, tracked for future action, or deleted.

I can’t claim perfect inner peace, but at least my email inbox isn’t standing in my way.

Photo: Redvers

Several years ago, and shortly before reading a Douglas Adams essay in which he mentioned the very same oddity, I saw for the first time the highway sign outside of Albuquerque that warned (or was it philosophizing?), “Gusty Winds May Exist.”

It’s an accidentally beautiful sign that can be found in at least three places in New Mexico. Despite its poetry, I do feel warned to put down my cellphone, soy extra vanilla latte, and electric shaver and put both hands on the wheel.

Recently, I’ve started seeing highway signs that purport to be warning signs but which actually have the effect of sending my mind off in confusing loops and starting my head shaking side to side in an unconscious statement of “no!”

Here’s the text of the diamond-shaped, orange sign:

Guardrail Damage Ahead

OK, so what am I supposed to be warned to do? Not crash into the area where the guardrail is broken? Or “yes, driver, if you’re about to crash, please pick this already damaged spot so we don’t have to make two separate repairs?”

Some things, like road signs and test results and department meetings, should be actionable. If there’s nothing I can really do in response to them, please take them away!

Photo: srboisvert

“Should” is a word I’m not too fond of. It’s not always a bad word, but in contexts such as “I should really keep trying to make this dead-end job work,” it’s a counterproductive guilt word.

Don’t weasel around with “should.” Make a decision. Act. (Or evaluate and decide not to act.)

Some people find it very easy to blog, and many do not. Personally, I find the questions of audience and purpose the most challenging.

“Why do I want to write about X in a public way?” is a question that outlasts any particular answer I give it. I ask myself that question frequently.

Sometimes, I come up with an answer that prods me forward into posting. Other times, I discover that my initial inclination to post really doesn’t have a compelling, true-ringing reason, and I do something else instead of posting. Still other times, my response to the question is simply, “why not?” and I go ahead and post.

In his blog, Michael Bloch has a post that might help you decide whether or not to start your own blog. His point? The act of starting a blog brings with it an implied promise to your blog’s readers: if someone takes the time to come read your blog, if they open themselves to a dependence on my blog (however mild), then you owe it to them not to leave them in the lurch.

Starting a blog is great. Not starting a blog is fine, too. Starting a blog and then petering out with your posting after people have become readers of your blog is something to try to avoid.

Photo: gilles chiroleu

About halfway between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, off the west side of I-25, stands someone’s great idea that didn’t make it. Originally designed as an outlet mall, it failed to attract enough customers and was bought up by a Native American group that renamed it “Traditions!” and restyled it as one-stop shopping for Indian gifts.

That failed, too, and some other enterprising folks bought up the whole outfit and turned it into a turnkey movie studio and production mall (can you call that a mall?)

I saw recently that it’s for sale again.

I’m guessing it has something to do with the location. People driving between Albuquerque and Santa Fe are, for the most part, pretty focused on getting to the city they didn’t leave from. The drive is about an hour but would be 15 minutes longer to exit I-25 and see the “great idea,” given that it’s not an easy-off, easy-on exit.

In any event, the “great idea” wasn’t.

Since so many people with much more disposable income than you come up with great ideas that fail, you should notice this and not take it for granted that your great idea will succeed.

But don’t take this the wrong way.

You should still try out your great ideas. Just spend a little time figuring out how you’re going to avoid bankrupting yourself if the idea doesn’t pan out. That way, you can keep rolling out new trials of new “great ideas,” and eventually, in retrospect, some of your guesses will turn out to have been right on.

Photo: debaird

If the lifeblood of business is relationships, how can an introvert succeed in business?

Being introverted doesn’t mean being weak at creating, nourishing, and sustaining relationships; being introverted just means not radiating a desire to interact with others in certain contexts. A more introverted person may initially shy away from sales and blogging, but there is more than one way to skin a cat (though I must say, that’s quite a saying when you reflect on it.  What possessed people to think about skinning a cat, anyway!?), and “introverted” and “extraverted” are not pure categories but rather social constructions.

Even with the internet’s constraints, and most certainly in spite of the deafening voices out there insisting that social medium X or Web 2.0 technique Y is “what everybody’s doing,” there must be ways of building and enjoying two-way relationships online that the introvert-leaning type can excel in.

What are they? What are the tools of choice, or the “modes of choice” while using the tools available?

Suggestions and observations welcome from extraverts and introverts welcome!

This is a post about “good enough.”

“Good enough” is not good enough when it is:

• shoddy work
• the result of not caring
• a manifestation of avoidance.

“Good enough” is an approach that’s justified (and possibly even optimal) when:

• you need to have something out there in the world to see how it does
• your belief that you can plan a future sequence of events is an erroneous belief in controllability
• you have perfectionist tendencies that keep you from getting anything done.

As members of a CSA (community supported agriculture) program in Albuquerque called Los Poblanos, each week (or two, depending on what we want) we pick up a box of organic fruits and vegetables from them. Occasionally, due to travel or a full crisper drawer, we need to change our box pickup schedule.

The Los Poblanos website had a form-based way to change the pickup schedule. Or that’s what I think it was. It was a typical implementation of a typical technology to make a typical task possible.

Went I went to the site recently, though, their web designer had decided to put some more time into the interface, and this was the result:

With this version, I saw a representation of when my boxes were scheduled, and I could make the change I wanted easily. I hadn’t felt that the old way had been a problem, but when I experienced the new way, I realized why I liked it so much better.

The old interface was designed according to what a computer finds easy to do.

The new interface was designed according to what I find easy to do.

Spend a few minutes today looking at the implementations of technology around you. I guarantee you’ll find examples of person-ignorant design. What should the design have looked like instead?

It’s not the scarcity of money or time or knowledge. The real barrier to entry is uncertainty. If you knew that what you were trying right now would work eventually, you wouldn’t fret about spending your money or time. But unless you’re very good at practicing non-attachment or are the gambling type, that’s not how it feels.

It’s tough, not knowing if your work will create the outcome you think you want.

Photo: kwerfeldein

There’s a greeting card that asks (paraphrased), “what would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?” There’s a problem with these encouraging words, though (or with this platitude, depending on what mood you’re in):

Without uncertainty, most endeavors would become unbearably boring.

Ellen J. Langer has remarked that golf wouldn’t be much fun for long if you knew every shot would be a hole in one. Now that may sound like one of those annoying comments about lottery winners – “they were much happier before they won.” Yeah, yeah, we think. Just let ME win, and let me find out for myself whether I’ll be less happy.

But we don’t have the choice of eliminating uncertainty. Our perception that we could is illusory.

The only way through the barrier is to act even though we’re uncertain.