I’ve been burdened for months by a bad case of email bankruptcy. My inbox has been constantly full of unread emails, and it keeps getting worse and worse (on a busy day I might get 400 odd emails). It had gotten to the stage that in the last 2 weeks I was forgetting to write up posts or follow up on leads, and I was getting emails from people asking me why I hadn’t done things. I’m far from alone in this problem, but I decided enough was enough.

I’ve never read Getting Things Done before (and I still haven’t), but I was aware of the concepts behind the book/ system, so I did some more research and this is what I’ve changed.

GTD Software

Things is a brilliant package but only so far in that it’s extremely simple to use. It’s not as fully featured as some other packages I looked at, but the barrier to entry is that much simpler; the short form is I worked this one out in minutes, where other packages I wasted an hour on without any luck.

You use it by adding things you need to get done to it, sort of like list making/ task management. Ctrt + Alt + Space brings up a pop-up box for new entries, and you can drag and drop links to anything into this screen: in my case emails.

So what I did Sunday was sit down and go through my email, including my “follow up” folder which I’d started avoiding. Drag and drop the email in, add a note saying what it was and the action, tag it (TechCrunch, duncanriley.com, general…whatever), put a date due on it (you can also add someday if it’s not a priority but you want it handy) so today (monday morning) I’ve started the morning with a list of things to follow up or action.

The next trick was before working my way through the list, I started with email first (well after a quick glance at Techmeme and TechCrunch so I knew roughly what was happening for context on any emails), it took 15-20 minutes but I’d cleared up the entire nights email and was back to square one (well a week back, I still haven’t cleared the full backlog yet, but if you were starting from empty, you’d have an empty inbox). Emails that need to be deleted are deleted, ones that require followup are added to Things and dragged into a separate folder.

Now all I had left was a list of things to be done.

Clear workflow

The hardest habit to break is my usual read everything in Google Reader first. I decided the way I’d tackle this was to do the first two action items in Things First, then read my feeds (noting that I have Techmeme Firehouse in Twitter in case anything is breaking). So I did, one post, two posts…and it wasn’t even 10am, then I started reading feeds but only in order of importance (I allocate my reading list into A, B Web 2.0, Personal, General and other categories). 2 folders down, I switch back to the list. Another post done. Go back and spend 10 minutes with the next Google Reader folder, switch back to list etc etc….

One of my other bad work habits has always been having way too many tabs open in Firefox, to the point that I often get lost in terms of which tab has which thing open etc… I decided the better way to do this was to make sure I close every tab after I write a post, and only have tabs open that are relevant to the post as I do it (aside from a core 3, Reader, Techmeme, blog entry page). What I found immediately is that I could research and reference far more easily than from half a dozen or so tabs open that a relevant and grouped.

Will It Last?

Monday’s are always pretty quiet as it’s Sunday in the States so perhaps this morning might not be a typical day, but it feels good to be writing this post before midday having written 4 posts with another 2 definites in the system, half a dozen space fillers if it gets real quiet, and all my other tasks I need to get done ready and waiting. I even went as far as adding in one day a week to update Facebook friends, another for LinkedIn etc…. everything spelled out.

It won’t work for everyone, and obviously requires some discipline, but I’m already excited by the allocate email to GTD system by itself: hopefully now I wont forget to respond to emails or write up posts and my email bankruptcy will be checked at the door.

I’ll report back in a week with an update to see how this system works under pressure.

Nearly a week in and slowly getting the hang of things, might try some higher-rez stuff next week. In case you haven’t dropped by yet, I’ve devised a cure for cancer and bought peace to the world….or not.

Hangover Cures
Linux
Open Source
Canvas for WordPress
Blockbuster & Circuit City

To subscribe, click here, and if you want me to answer your questions on absolutely anything, drop me an email to duncan @ nichenet.com.au

Re: this, Rage against the machine

On a more serious note, simple rules: Twitter for Breaking, Goog Reader for reading, use aggregators like Techmeme and others to pick up the stuff you miss.  Now if only I could sort email….but shhhhh, we wont mention that dirty word today.

CNet reports that Andrew Baron has pulled the auction for his Twitter account. It was a clever little publicity stunt from day one, and credit to Andrew on it, but the following sounds severely retarded:

Essentially, he said, a fellow Twitterer wrote him suggesting that the people who were bidding the eBay auction well into four figures were “all spam marketers, people who will do anything just to get their name out there, people who don’t understand Web 2.0 and blogging.”

“I already knew,” Baron said, “there would be a great range of different types of (possible) outcomes. But I believed that I would be able to manage the outcome by trying to make a positive outcome for the buyer, for my friends and followers. Even if it wasn’t a good fit, I (believed) I could work with them. But after I heard that they were all just spam marketers, that just kind of killed it for me and I didn’t want to risk that.”….

Instead, he insisted to me, he just felt very uneasy about having the account–and his many followers–fall into the hands of people who didn’t necessarily have any idea how to use the account in a way that benefits all concerned.

WTF did he think would happen? that some utopian hippy would buy the account and spread peace and goodwill to his followers? lolz

Time for some appropriate Ben Folds Five

Good news: YouTube’s partner program is now available in Australia, Japan and Ireland. I’ve applied, no idea if I’ll qualify.

Now for the WTF: I had Nova on in the car (wife had been in the car, otherwise it would have been on ABC Local Radio) and their sad excuse for a news came on a 8am (sad as they seemingly read the headline only), and it went something like this

“If you upload videos to YouTube ads will now have to run on your videos.”

Apparently the partners program = forced advertising on YouTube. I should be so lucky…well I might be if I get approved, but we’ll wait and see.

duncanriley.tv

I still haven’t settled on the exact format, and I’m going to mix it up, but thought I should at least come out swinging a little.

Visuals on Ustream aren’t great once you download the thing then syndicate them out, might switch to quicktime or even my video camera instead of sticking with a recorded live stream,  we’ll see how things go. This is still an experiment at this stage, some where along the line something might work well

It’s been a year since I’ve last updated this site, so it’s time for a new look. At the time of writing I’m still working on it, the blogroll is still very dead (as it was on the last template), and I’m still tweaking colors etc from the original template, but getting there. Apologies if this looks odd for you at the moment.

I’ve purchased a ticket for this years Gnomedex in Seattle, my first. Buggered if I know how I’ll get there, the airfare will work itself out in the coming months, they always do. Just a shame Virgin doesn’t start the pacific route till October, finally some competition on Qantas’ cash cow route.

The occasion coincided with this response to my earlier what to broadcast about video from Chris Pirillo. Perhaps my calling may be in surprise humour? (language warning)

(language warning for video)

So I’ve been playing with Live streaming services and I want to do something more regular, but not 100% on what. I love what Chris Pirillo does, but the subject matter is a little tame for me. Open to suggestions, on topic, format and even streaming service of choice.

Note I recorded the video above directly to YouTube, hence the quality is shite. I picked up a $100 Mac compatible webcam on skype the other week and the quality is easily twice as good as the overly expensive with backstory iSight I bought last year, and it looks nothing like this.

Mark Glaser has a post up today on the virtues of the so-called “social media press release” (pic above): The Social Press Release: Multimedia, Two-Way, Direct to the Public. He runs through the arguments in favor of it and how apparently PR folk are starting to use it.

Perhaps I’m old school…ok, I am old school, but I’ve been dealing with media releases since 1997, when I was taught in a job how to write a good press release, so I have no issues with the current format of press releases and I don’t see an immediate need to dump them for this format, although I do take on board that others may prefer the style.

Press releases can be both bad and good, the bad usually comes from people who have no real idea how to write one. I get a mixture every day, some I read, some I just delete.  How a media release should work: short intro that includes exactly what’s in the release (the hook), second paragraph that expands on the details in the first one, maybe another paragraph if needed, two paragraphs of quotes (always important when pitching at the MSM as they may run them) then a concluding paragraph. Ideally the press release should never be longer than a page. That’s the formula I was taught and have always followed.

Here’s my issue with the social media release, and I think it’s a fatal flaw: there’s no hook. Leading with contact information is bizarre because contact info is only relevant for a follow up and is always best left in the footer. But to then have the headline below that, and “core news facts” with bullet points on the release….where’s the hook? General rule of thumb is you’ve got seconds to hook someone reading your press release before they delete it/ trash it: headline should lead with an immediate description (hook) of what the offering is. Good headlines help, but it’s that opening introduction that most people will read, you need to hook them there (headlines can’t always convey the vital info). Rejig a social media release to open with a hook then I’d think it would work a lot better.