Zero Inbox

43folders.com is something i came across to figure out how one could improve his productivity at work. It isnt the one stop shop for all your problems but definately is a good place to start off trying to figure out how other people are solving the same problems you are facing.

One such solution i found was labelled "Zero Inbox". It didnt ring a bell when i read the title, but once I read through the article I figured out that I really was wasting a lot of time in checking and answering mails. Just by going through all the mails as the first thing in the morning, I was spending a lot of time in sorting out the mails that needed my immediate attention.

The approach given in "Zero Inbox" does sound a bit too scary at first, but once you try it out, you will realise that you hardly spend any more time than is needed with your mail client.

The idea proposed is very simple. Always make sure that you have "Zero" mails in your Inbox. Yeah, I know, "that's scary" :). And where do you move the ones you already have in the Inbox ? Well, for that you create 3 simple folders and move the mails accordingly into those folders. These 3 folders are "Archive", "Action" and "On Hold".

Archive : This would contain all the mails just for keep a track record of things going on now, and you dont necessarily have to read these mails more than once. Usually the FYI type mails and the current project status mails fall into this category. As days passed on I realised that i do get some mails which are more personal to me, like the salary reciept mails. I decided to move these under another archive folder called "Personal". Doing this is fine, as long as you dont create so many subfodlers that you end up wasting time in deciding which folder a mail should go. Just having 2 folders, archive for work related stuff, and another archive for personal stuff should do.

Action : This would contain all the mails to which you "have" to reply today. Something like a list of "to do" items for you for today. Ofcourse, another good thing that you should follow while deciding on the mails that go into this folder is to reply them "right now" or "later" ? One good practise that people follow is to immediately reply back to the mails that take less than 2 minutes to type. Some people use the approach of batch processing. First thing you do is sort out the mails into these 3 magic folders, and get back to the work in hand. Then, in another batch, after sometime, come back to your mailbox and reply to as many mails as you can from this folder. There is yet another school of thought that says that "dont check your mails first thing in the morning" :) .. I'll leave this as food for thought :p

On Hold : This would contain all the mails that you will need for quick access in the coming days, may be for one week from now. Things like, a mail to fill up some feedback form in the next 2 days.

Ofcourse, one more important thing that you should do while moving the messages into "Action" and "On Hold" folder is to mark these mails as "unread". That way you know the number of mails that need your attention. And once you are done with the work for a given mail, you should move it to "Trash" or "Archive" as the case may be.

Sounds quite simple and easy ? Well, the toughest part is to keep yourself disciplined to follow this religiously and actually take action on the mail items in these folders .. If you are game for it, then give it a shot for a week, and you might actually find yourself left with lots of free time :)

Workrave

Have you ever worked on your comp for so long relentlessly that you started experiencing pains in your knuckles and fingers or wrists or neck ? Beware, this is a very good symptom of RSI. One of my roommates had this very bad habit of sinking into his seat with legs stretched out and crossed, bending his back. This caused him pain in his lower back and ankles. This is another very good symptom of RSI.

RSI can be called as the bane of computers. The only good thing about RSI is that it can be avoided but it needs very regular and disciplined attention of yourself. Frequent breaks, small walks, lots of water to drink, moving your limbs, all these so called "exercises" should be mandated at regular intervals to prevent RSI.

I searched for a lot of timer/alarm applets that could help me in maintaining these mandatory breaks, but none were useful. In last week's edition of Deccan Herald, I came across this killer app called "WorkRave" which does exactly what I was looking for.

Fortunately its available on Linux too. It is a very simple app that examines your key strokes and mouse movements and tabulates the time you spend using your keyboard and mouse with breaks not more than 5 seconds. It accumulates the time you spend using the input devices of your comp. The only problem is that it doesn't include the time you spend reading on the web :) . which I think is fine to ignore.

Based on these usage time data, it forces you to take micro-breaks of 20 seconds, after every 10 minutes of computer usage. It also forces you to take a "rest-break" of 5 minutes after every 30 minutes of computer usage. The best part of this calculation is that it accumulates the time spent on the computer and not just the bare real-time intervals like the ordinary timers/alarms. The duration of these breaks and the interval between these breaks is also configurable though I would suggest not to change these defaults drastically.

I have been using this for a week now and I am surprised to see how fast time flies while working on the comp. Another good statistic this app gives is the total time spent in a day on the comp. I was shocked to see that I was spending only 55 - 60 % of my time at office on the computer !!! That's something like I spent around 4 hours on the computer in the 8 hours that I spend in office. Just compare this percentage to that of the guy sitting at the bank teller counter ? ;-) Ofcourse, you can include another hour for time spent on reading things on the browser and some code, but that too isn't a very great figure to look at.

You like it or not, if you are using computers at your work, you better start using this app. Try it out and you too will be surprised at the things that you will discover about yourself :-)