Blog. Insight, issues, opinions and productivity solutions

Six steps to elicit a response to your emails

Posted on December 20, 2010 · Posted in Individual Solutions

I’ve discussed the harmful effects of Online silence, the phenomenon where you send email and no reply arrives for days. Since this phenomenon persists, driven by the endless flood of incoming messages, here are some tactics to apply when you run into it. Be proactive. Write your emails to encourage a response – short, to the point, and with clearly marked action items. Make the subject reflect the urgency and the required response: “Can you send me the financial summary by the Tuesday staff meeting?”, not “Staff”. If the mail is fast to read and process, the response is far.. Read more

Is there a downside to Quiet Time?

Posted on December 13, 2010 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms

I was lecturing at Ben Gurion University about Information Overload, and one attendee challenged me with this question: has the cost of disconnecting from the continuous barrage of communications been quantified? What he meant was this: the accepted wisdom in the Info Overload community is that it is advisable to take time out, “Quiet Time”, pre-assigned time slots in the workday when you don’t pull in incoming messages and calls and try to secure some isolation from interruptions. This allows one to get a stretch of concentrated focused thinking, which can do wonders for creativity, quality and effectiveness. But, as.. Read more

Why email is more stressful than paper mail

Posted on December 6, 2010 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

I was trying to get my email Inbox down to zero for the weekend, and though I was making good progress, I felt a mounting sense of stress. Realizing this, I stopped to introspect: why stress? Here I was, going down the list of incoming messages, deleting the useless ones and addressing the more important stuff, and generally doing a good job. Why stress, rather than a feeling of accomplishment? So I examined more closely what I was doing in the process, and I realized that many of the emails were carrying “gifts” of additional activities. One message might direct.. Read more

Overloaded child/parent communications

Posted on November 29, 2010 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms

I remember how as a small child in the fifties my family would go on Saturday to lunch at my grandma’s. It was quite a tiring walk across town (we had no car then) and it had occurred to me that as we had no telephone either, there was no way to cancel the get together if there was an unexpected need. But of course there wasn’t; life moved much more sedately then, and the meal would be waiting for us time after time. There was little need of frequent communication. That was then. Now, we were having dinner at.. Read more

The Offense system of Email Overload

Posted on November 24, 2010 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

I was delivering my Information Overload Jump Start workshop to a manager forum and we were discussing the reasons they were sending all those unnecessary messages to each other, when one of the participants made a perceptive comment: “We use”, she said, “the Offense System of addressing email!” What she meant, she elaborated, was that when in doubt you simply copied anyone in the organization who might be offended if you left them out. And since this is the path of caution, you bet they were sending to everybody and his brother – simply to be on the safe side!.. Read more

Wayda go, Ford! Stop driver distractions!

Posted on November 19, 2010 · Posted in Individual Solutions

Driving and <anything other than driving> don’t mix well, as I recently pointed out. Unfortunately, the number of <things other than driving> that you can do in a car grows fast as new technologies turn our cars into mobile electronic appliances with ever more computing, communications and multimedia capabilities. The more screens, computers, GPS systems and cellular communications on board, the less will the driver keep his or her eyes on the road! It is encouraging, then, to read that Ford has responded to this issue and will introduce, in selected 2011 models, features specifically intended to prevent distraction. The.. Read more

Climate control made easy

Posted on November 14, 2010 · Posted in Off-topic

I was at the World Usability Day 2010 conference, held in a beautiful auditorium in the Open University at Raanana (more on what I lectured about in coming posts), and I made a discovery that I just have to share with you: Hot air rises; cold air falls! Of course I knew this; I’d graduated in Physics, after all. But I failed to make the connection at first. I  was sitting there near the front of the hall and slowly freezing from the air conditioning, until pubic protest made the powers that be turn off the A/C. Later they turned.. Read more

How to politely respond to a cellphone in a meeting?

Posted on November 9, 2010 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

Now that we live in a reality where we’re interrupted by a cellphone call a few times every hour, it is inevitable that people ring us even while we’re in an important business meeting. The question becomes, then, how do we react to the ring while remaining polite? This was not a problem back in that ancient era – say, 25 years ago – when business people had something called an office, which had a door, and a secretary that could be asked not to transfer calls. But today we meet in coffee shops as often as in walled rooms,.. Read more

Spelling for the new millennium

Posted on October 29, 2010 · Posted in Off-topic

Tolerance to spelling errors changes as history progresses. For instance, in the middle ages nobody worried about spelling at all; I’ve read many a manuscript from six centuries ago (my wife is a historian researching that period) and the spelling of everything, even names of people and locations, is all over the place. As long as you could guess what is being referred to, nobody cared. The more precise attitudes of the 20th century would not tolerate this, so our spelling has become standardized, enabling us to play Scrabble and hold spelling bees. But the technology we use dictates our.. Read more

Keep your hands on the wheel!

Posted on October 24, 2010 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms

The silly, if cheerful, pop song from the fifties, “Seven little girls“,  gives us the chorus: All together now, one, two, three / Keep your mind on your driving / Keep your hands on the wheel / Keep your snoopy eyes on the road ahead / We’re having fun, sitting in the backseat / Kissing and a hugging with Fred! A somewhat improbable notion, considering that there were seven girls (plus Fred) in the back seat; but it has an important lesson: the driver should keep his mind on the driving, his eyes on the road, and – most obvious.. Read more