«Brokenness» © col_adamsonIf you want to be distracted from your work, give in to chatting, instant messaging (IM), phone calls or meetings. These are the ultimate productivity killers, because they suck up all your attention, break your flow and turn you mind into an enchained tiger wanting to be set free. They're synchronous communication mediums: you «need» to react immediately. Opposed to that, media like email (and letters, do you remember them…?) work asynchronously: you decide when to react.

The fourth part of this mini series on protecting your inbox shows you how to limit information that jumps on your desktop, staring at you, demanding immediate response or action.

Synchronous communication garbage

I'll deal with three common, time-wasting, synchronous types of office nags that clutter your inbox here:

1. Instant Messaging (IM)
2. People dropping by
3. (Invitations to) Phone conferences and meetings

1. Instant Messaging (IM) receives  » Read more

«Rabbit Bread» © swruler, «Feld1» © carlsonimkellerJust kidding…

But please consider what Al wrote on his blog (saw this first as a guest posting on Stephen's great HD Biz Blog):

it is now commonplace to have hundreds of emails in the inbox daily. There are 120,000 blogs created every day. Clearly, there exists information overload, and the only way to rise above the noise is the ability to add true knowledge. Information still needs to make an impact at the knowledge level, but the management of information is getting harder. This is evolution of the Information Age, not revolution.
(Al)

Knowledge is to information as bread is to grain. So - do you need to make bread from grain yourself if all you want is to eat bread? No. Why, then, would you want to pick all the news grains from all RSS fields across the world, when all you want is the big picture?

The third part of this mini series on protecting your inbox shows you how to stay up-to-date in the blogosphere without tracking each and every RSS feed out there yourself.  » Read more

The Great Wall, by Herbert Ponting (1907)

The Great Wall concept was revived again during the Ming Dynasty following the Ming army's defeat by the Mongols in the Battle of Tumu in 1449. The Ming had failed to gain a clear upper-hand over the Mongols after successive battles, and the long-drawn conflict was taking a toll on the empire. The Ming adopted a new strategy to keep the Mongols out by constructing walls along the northern border of China. Acknowledging the Mongol control established in the Ordos Desert, the wall followed the desert's southern edge instead of incorporating the bend of the Huang He.

Unlike the earlier Qin fortifications, the Ming construction was stronger and more elaborate due to the use of bricks and stone instead of rammed earth.

As Mongol raids continued periodically over the years, the Ming devoted considerable resources to repair and reinforce the walls.

(from: Wikipedia article on The Great Wall)

Are you devoting considerable resources, too, to protect your time? Are you getting more and more sophisticated in your fight for an empty inbox?

And does it turn out to be as futile as the Great Wall ultimately proved to be? Do you have to retreat, step by step? Too many hordes of spammers and other time wasters raiding your northern schedule territories, establishing strongholds in regions that belong to you, at least in theory?

Well - what if actually they aren't raiders, but came at your invitation?

In this mini-series on inbox protection, I'll describe how you possibly opened the gates to some time-wasting scourges - and how you can close the gates again.

The series

So far, there are the following postings:

• Protect your inbox (1): RSS feed frenzy and blog carnivals
• Protect your inbox (2): Scrub your RSS subscriptions
• Protect your inbox (3): Goodbye RSS
• Protect your inbox (4): Go async!
• Protect your inbox (5): Dispose yourself

«Pipeline Perspective» © Michael KelleyRecently, SpiKe of Organize IT sounded a bit worried, asking: Simplifying Our Lives: Is It A Lost Cause? Looking at RSS feeds, he said:

imagine that your job requires you to be knowledgeable on a subject, are we not potentially skipping useful information and therefore losing out to those who are able to take in dozens of feeds?
(SpiKe)

Today, in my mini series on protecting your inbox, I'll present more techniques how to deal with RSS feed overload. They are based on having your RSS feeds processed, that is: feed items get scrutinized and (sometimes) filtered out, to improve your reading experience.

The tool I'll use is Yahoo Pipes, a graphical editor that allows you to have any news item grabbed from your feeds, checked and even modified, if you wish. Yahoo Pipes looks a bit techy at first, but relax: I'm providing ready-to-use filters that you may use out of the box and even clone and manipulate, too.  » Read more

The Great Wall, by Herbert Ponting (1907)

The Great Wall concept was revived again during the Ming Dynasty following the Ming army's defeat by the Mongols in the Battle of Tumu in 1449. The Ming had failed to gain a clear upper-hand over the Mongols after successive battles, and the long-drawn conflict was taking a toll on the empire. The Ming adopted a new strategy to keep the Mongols out by constructing walls along the northern border of China. Acknowledging the Mongol control established in the Ordos Desert, the wall followed the desert's southern edge instead of incorporating the bend of the Huang He.

Unlike the earlier Qin fortifications, the Ming construction was stronger and more elaborate due to the use of bricks and stone instead of rammed earth.

As Mongol raids continued periodically over the years, the Ming devoted considerable resources to repair and reinforce the walls.

(from: Wikipedia article on The Great Wall)

Are you devoting considerable resources, too, to protect your time? Are you getting more and more sophisticated in your fight for an empty inbox?

And does it turn out to be as futile as the Great Wall ultimately proved to be? Do you have to retreat, step by step? Too many hordes of spammers and other time wasters raiding your northern schedule territories, establishing strongholds in regions that belong to you, at least in theory?

Well - what if actually they aren't raiders, but came at your invitation?

In this mini-series on inbox protection, I'll describe how you possibly opened the gates to some time-wasting scourges - and how you can close the gates again.

RSS feed frenzy

You're subscribed to many (many!) RSS feeds. No big deal?  » Read more