4, 5, 6: Micro-Managing My Time & Email

Experiments #4, 5, & 6.

Or, What Didn't Work for Me

Best advice these days is to manage your energy, not your time. I love this idea in the abstract.

But time is so…Measurable. Ubiquitous. Limited.

Time structures our days, our weeks, our years, our lives.

And I think most of us really want to ‘spend’ our time well.

Doing things that matter, that we enjoy, that will endure. ?

Time, and how we use it, is one reason we love holidays and hate long commutes.

This week’s Experiments in Productivity reviews 3 of my efforts to micro-manage my Time and my Email – Inbox Zero, Clockify, and Forest.

Experiment #4: Inbox Zero

Inbox Zero is where you stay on top of your email so well that you often have 0 (yes, ZERO) messages there.

You deftly handle all simple incoming requests immediately. You sort the rest and efficiently respond during planned, themed, time-limited, time-batched sessions. And you file everything away neatly in folders.

Honestly, I don’t even know what to say.

If you can do Inbox Zero, I am jealous.

I did consider trying it, momentarily.

I even ruined a few evenings deleting messages and putting others in too many folders. But my email is more like Tetris, except it never resets.

?

Then I realized, this ambition was similar to the times I thought…

• Maybe I should start running
• Or Maybe I should batch cook every weekend
• Or, when I was 12, Maybe Peter W?????????? will like me*

[Aside: If you know this real (but very unGoogleable) person, please tell him I am sorry I followed him around pretending not to stare at him for at least a year. Also, that he spelled my name wrong in my yearbook which was mortifying but helped me move on, so thanks, I guess.]

Back to Inbox Zero:

Evaluation, after Reflection: Like running, batch cooking, and, sigh, Peter, I concluded that INBOX ZERO sounds like a great strategy for the right person. But not for me. I can't really give it a score, since I didn't give it a good try. I am still looking for better email systems, so please share what works for you in the comments.

Experiment #5: Clockify

On to Time itself, specifically, figuring out where mine went.

Clockify is a free Chrome extension to track time use. You set up any categories for your projects, tasks, or domains of activity.

For faculty, these can be as simple as Research, Teaching, Mentoring, and Service. Or you can get very specific—especially useful if you are billing percent effort to a project or assessing your time use for goal-setting or documentation.

Then you clock in and out as you go about your day, clicking your starts and stops of effort in different categories. If you remember to do this consistently, Clockify creates a variety of interesting reports summarizing your [time-based, self-reported] efforts.

What I liked

Clockify is a useful tool for self-assessment and documentation.

I noticed some clear patterns. For example, I spent too long being a perfectionist on less-important Task X while neglecting the long-term, impactful Goal Y. ?

I’d recommend giving Clockify (or similar extensions/apps) a try, if you are curious and can remember to turn the timers on and off as you change tasks.

Why I made myself stop after 2 weeks

Clockify creates spreadsheet-generated totals (daily, weekly) of hours. Very useful.

For me, however, these work hour totals set off a very unhealthy work ethic-y thing. When I saw that a week had 45 hours recorded, I thought…Why not work more next week? And next/

Gamifying, checking off boxes – these all motivate me, especially for my frog ?? tasks. But my goal is absolutely not to spend more and more hours doing work, so I stopped using the Clockify tracker, and fast. ?

Evaluation: Excellent tool A-, but for me: D(angerous)

Experiment #6: Forest App

My last experiment used the Forest Chrome extension to focus on immediate time use.

Forest describes itself as a “Focus for Productivity” product.

How it works: You decide to work uninterrupted for 10 to 100 minutes. You can choose to block websites that tempt you. You can forbid yourself to pick up your phone.

Then you start ‘growing a tree’. While you work, a virtual tree is apparently growing. [Somehow in the paid version the company promises to plant real trees too] ?

The goal is to “Stay Focused, Be Present”

What I liked: Planning to work, setting a goal, blocking specific websites, knowing there was a time-bounded focus. All this was good, and available in the free version. There is a cute tree, and if you try to close Forest you face a sad reminder your little tree will die.?

What I didn’t like: No alarm or indicator when I had completed my 10 or 20 minutes, so I kept checking back, which distracted me.

Evaluation: Fantastic if it helps you, but I drifted away from using it.

Instead, when I am trying to work faster, I just set a phone timer. Edit this page – 5 mins. ?Answer 10 small emails -- 30 minutes. And for deeper writing, planning, and thinking, I like Virtual Co-Working (see Experiment #2).

Overall Evaluations

0?? Inbox Zero: Not for me. Please send ?? help.

? Clockify: Cool to assess where my time went, but dangerous for me in longer-term

?? Forest: Cute, vaguely helpful, but a phone timer works for me too

What have you tried to get on top of all the little things? To manage your time more effectively? Tame your inbox?

?? Please share in the comments what works for you.

?? And subscribe to be notified when I post Experiment #7 on Tuesday 3 October

Next Week: Strategies for ?? STOPPING ??work