Yesterday I took the day to get a monkey off my back – my email inbox. Yes, I spent a Sunday to process all of the email that has piled up over who knows how long. This could have been avoided if I followed the advice I gave to myself many years ago when I faced a similar situation on an almost daily basis – managing your email inbox to zero.

As the name implies, it means you will continuously work to have no emails in your inbox. So where will they go? The following is a list of actions that I apply to all of my inbox messages:

• Read
• Delete
• Forward
• File
• Act Upon

Note I don’t have “leave in there” as a valid action. With the capacity of mail folders on just about every type of email software, coupled with search, filing messages that need to be saved and processing the rest will get your inbox clutter in order.

In general, I do not neglect email. I do read it through the day and process most mail. Messages that are low priority or something not requiring immediate action are what tend to build up. But a few of these messages a day can add up quickly and thus here I am.

First Step – Low Hanging Fruit

As I sat down to process my inbox, I decided to go through every message first, looking for low-hanging fruit, which I determined as messages that could right-away be deleted or filed. If it took longer than a second to think about them, I would skip them for the full review.

This went well – I started with 100 messages in my inbox and after processing low-hanging fruit I ended up with 50! Not only did I feel a sense of accomplishment already, but some relief that I wouldn’t spend the entire day on email.

Process Them In Order

After I got my inbox to a manageable size, I decided to tackle them in the order of the most recent received, going in reverse. It was a Sunday, so this made sense, but if it was a weekday I might have wanted to process the oldest first. And I worked them one at a time – not tackling the next message until the current one was completed. After going through the low-hanging fruit, I had already cleared out redundant messages or reviewed those related to others, so I would not have been surprised by a second message related to the one I was currently working on.

Needless to say this took a while, and longer than my review for low-hanging fruit. I tried to act on as many of them as possible, especially if work was involved. For some, I added a task to my to-do list system and filed the email. There was a mix of actual client work, messages to reply to which required actual thought and email receipts among other things. After a few hours, my inbox was at zero, and all was right in the world.

It’s About Keeping It That Way

Ideally, my inbox should always be at zero. If there are any messages in there, they should be there for a brief period – no longer than a day or two – and almost serve as a poor-excuse-for-a task list. If it would take longer, I would add the task to my to-do list system, where it would be prioritized properly. The goal is to only have one list to work from, not two.

The Origin Of A Process

As I related earlier, this process was borne from necessity. Years back I worked for a large international company where email was flying from all directions. I would not be unusual for me to come into work at 8 am East Coast US time and have 400 new messages in my inbox! Granted many were related to each others as part of a message thread, but they still took time to process.

To make things worse, my manager left all of his email in his inbox! I realized this after a while when he would yell at me for not telling him something when I had already emailed him on it days ago. One time when in his office I noticed he had literally thousands of email in his inbox, most unread. It dawned on me the reality of this particular job was reading and filing email, and searching for it when called on the carpet, which happened all too frequently.

Everybody needs their own system for work. I share this as its something that has worked for me for over a decade, and when I have personally shared it with folks they have responded favorably to it.

Give it a try, and let me know what you think of it.

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The date for conversion of broadcast television in the US from analog to digital has changed to June 12, 2009. Originally it was set to next Tuesday, February 17, but at the last minute a bill moved through Congress to delay it. In short, if you don’t have the right equipment, you won’t be able to watch TV. As you can see from the accompanying photo of my TV from a recent test done by CBS2 in Chicago, I have the right stuff.

The idea behind delaying it was to give more time to people to get the right equipment. I won’t get into what “right equipment” is but you can check out DTVAnswers.com for more information. After watching endless promotions of the digital switch for almost forever, I say bring it on, right now, even sooner if possible! Why? Because no matter how long you wait, people still won’t catch on. If you don’t believe me, look at smoke detectors.

For as long as smoke detectors have been in existence, the daily news is riddled with stories of deaths in homes that were on fire and did not have smoke detectors at all, or non-functioning ones. Why? I have no idea. Other than the pure negligence, what causes someone to not spend US$10 on a device that saves lives? I have never heard of anyone denying the merits of smoke detectors, yet people still don’t have them.

After fires ravage a home and people in Chicago, firefighters canvas the neighborhood handing out free smoke detectors. Maybe TV station employees should do the same, checking if people have the right equipment and if not handing out converter boxes. Either that or run digital tests during American Idol or Survivor and not during the morning news, as its obvious with the extension the media has failed to get the message across to everyone.

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The next likemind will be Friday, February 20, 2009 in dozens of cities around the world.

In Chicago, it will be at Spa Cafe, 112 W. Monroe, between Clark and LaSalle Streets in the Loop at 8:00 am. Check out the Spa Cafe Web site for more information, and you can find your way with a Google Map to Spa Cafe here.

I call likemind a gathering of creative-minded people, from various disciplines including Internet, advertising, art, social media, et. al.

No RSVP is required. You are also welcome to join the likemind Chicago Facebook group.

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Following up on my list of things I feel Starbucks should sell, I would like to address something they do sell, I actually buy, but it appears many others may not – a 5 lb. bag of Starbucks Pike Place roast coffee beans.

Last year Starbucks announced it would be brewing a new coffee called Pike Place roast. Named after the location of their first store, it was touted as a more mellow roast and it would be served all day, becoming its new house roast. Its announcement was part of a string of things that came from the Seattle coffee giant, including mixed sales results and that it would close all of its stores one afternoon to retool and retrain. As well, it was announced Pike Place roast would be offered in 5 lb. bags. Typically Starbucks offered its coffees in 1 lb. or smaller bags.

When I heard this, I had to try it for myself, as I like to buy coffee in larger quantities because I drink a lot of it. I had tried Pike Place roast by the cup and I thought it was good, but not great. I figured it would be worth a try to brew it myself, a little stronger as I tend to usually do with any coffee. And I liked it! For me, the combination of a large bag and the ability to brew it to my liking, this offering from the coffee giant worked for me.

And maybe just me. I have gone into several different Starbucks stores in the Chicagoland area, and when I purchase the bag, I usually get the same reaction from the people who work there – surprise. Apparently, I am one of the few, if any, customers who buy the 5 lb. bag from stores. The baristas have told me they infrequently or have never sold one, and customers who are in line with me or nearby the counter are surprised to see me walking away with a huge bag of coffee. Whenever I see the looks of awe in faces, I ask people if they are aware of this offering, and most people say no.

One question I am asked is how long a bag of coffee lasts. As you can see by the accompanying photo, I opened it a few weeks back and so far it has lasted 4 weeks. You will also notice the bag itself is almost as big as my coffeemaker!

Thinking about this more, it caused me to wonder if there is anything I am offering in my business Dunkirk Systems, LLC that I am not actively marketing. So I have to ask – are you offering anything in your business your customers may not be aware of?

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As the holiday season is well behind us, it’s time for me to look back on it and take notes for the next holiday season, with this year’s planning to commence in the summer.

The Dunkirk Card

Once again I worked with the creative director of Blue Bag Horse to create the Dunkirk Systems, LLC card. As I work with a select few graphic designers, I always thought it nice for them to receive a card they did not design themselves. Also, I am lucky to be working with Blue Bag Horse in any form, so the card is it. When I sat down with them, the only “theme” I could only think of one theme – reindeer. This most likely came from my trip to Finland for Nokia OpenLab and reindeer are big there, both for Christmas decorations and for dinner. As a result here is the design of the front of the card.

They came up with a clever snowflake design comprised of reindeer.

I decided once again to make a charitable donation in lieu of gifts to clients, partners and friends, and this year’s recipient was YouthBuild Boston, a pro-bono client of mine and a great organization that teaches kids real skills in construction, as well as providing them and the community with a stronger foundation. I was proud to feature them and their logo on the back of the card as shown:

Visit YouthBuild Boston’s Web site for more information on this great organization.

It’s better to give than to receive

As for the numbers, I sent out nearly 100 cards, and 2 were returned with bad addresses. I am tracking these people down now. How many did I receive? 7, as in seven.

This number does not include e-cards, for which I probably received a dozen but I didn’t count them specifically, or print out anything. I cherished and hung up the cards I did receive with care. But I cannot say those who didn’t send cards are not nice people! Some people don’t send physical cards – they are not necessarily cheap or environmentally friendly – and in a down economy people may be cutting back to only the essentials. And some people don’t deal with physical, paper cards and prefer to send email or e-cards.

But I did not send cards just to receive them. And I do believe in personal notes and cards to people. In this age of getting bombarded with email and other messages over the Internet, it is nice to get something tangible that you can hold in your hand, and surely stands out from the crowd.

Looking ahead

So what to do for 2009? One of the challenges with sending physical cards is getting a physical address to send them to! Many people do not have their address on their business cards or Web site, and some investigative work and queries were required. I may expand beyond paper cards with an e-card or some holiday greeting online. But as it stands now, I am not planning on abandoning sending hand-personalized, paper holiday greeting cards.

What are your plans? Feel free to share your thoughts by commenting to this post.

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