Friday, November 23, 2007

"Zero inbox" & "Business travel mode"

1) i read Merlin Man's "Zero inbox" column some weeks ago and the changes i've implemented & which are working great for me are:
- My inbox is NOT my todo list. i try to "process" everything asap (somehow aligned with GTD). i have a separate todo list (using my Palm Treo).
- I have 1 archive, not 15 like before (one for each project, team, topic, ...) . I still find everything (even easier then before) searching by date, sender/receiver or using Google Desktop.
- I've implemented a macro that archives emails by shortcut. Email-triage is a pleasure now instead of the pain it was before.

2) From time to time i have to travel to our company headquarter which takes me ~ 3 hours by train (one direction). I found that i prefer working from workplace (or even better from home), but that those rare business trips give me 2x3 hours of great productivity. No interruptions, just my notebook & me 3 hours locked in isolation without the opportunity to do something else. Something Tom DeMarco describes as "flow". I'll try to get into "Business travel mode" without traveling in the future. (In Business travel mode i wouldn't have the chance to blog too :-)).

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