Email is evil?

We're at our two day online marketing and new media class/seminar/workshop thing ... and we're thinking...

• is email relevant?
• it's annoying
• intrusive
• time consuming
• addictive
• often poorly written with lots of seplling mistakes
• not as good as a phone call 
• impersonal - cos you could see someone, but who wants to see people?
• necessary - we wouldn't be without it
• fast 
• traceable - could get you into trouble - eg. when you address to the person you're writing about.
• full of spam
• fills up your inbox
• personalised fonts and auto signatures with photos of cats and comic sans writing (ugh!)
• people who leave FWD>FWD>FWD> etc! So untidy
• LOTS OF EXCLAMATION MARKS !!!!! IS THAT BAD?????
• (not so evil) Angels etc. made out of emoticons - quite clever
• LOL 
• Email language hz bcum mr lk txt language >:-(
• Demands a quick response
• People who put "high priority" on every email
• People who forward really bad jokes

Okay, I think that's enough. So is email really evil? Or are there a few good features in there?

(Thanks for the photo, gagilas!) 

Posted via email from Simon's posterous

More thoughts on productivity

This is spurred on by a few of the conversations had at the Tweetup last Thursday, as well as (it seems) the constant effort to improve efficiency, and the resulting discovery that I am my own worst enemy.

Still, I'm in good company.

So I was at the Tweetup, talking with some very smart people about geeky stuff, including greasemonkey scripts that took hours to develop, that save a few microseconds when filling out a web form.

We all think we want productivity, but sometimes our actions say otherwise - specifically the actions that spend ridiculous resources making things theoretically more productive, some time in the future, instead of doing the (always harder) stuff of right now.

Like today. So often we think of a productivity app as something we add on. We're almost addicted to adding something on... but sometimes it's about what we take away. Like turning my second monitor off for a short while.

Works for me. Here's to less!

Deadlines

Image by dead_squid via Flickr
We are such strange creatures.

We need - or at least I need - deadlines to keep us motivated, full of a sense of urgency.

But those same deadlines, a tool designed to help us get to where we want to go, can become a harsh taskmaster. Tasks that you've waited months to do can become tiresome chores, simply because they're on a to-do list with deadlines.

This is the danger of implementing GTD only halfway. GTD starts with putting everything that's on your to-do list - everything - in one place where you can see it. The aim is to get it out of your head. But it's easy to stop there, and the relief you feel is only temporary.

So in this post I've not only diagnosed my issue, but found the cure: keep working at turning that GTD list into a strategic list, a list I'm in charge of, rather than a shopping list of things I must do before the end of the day.

Thanks for listening! That was helpful :)

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