Collaboration in the Enterprise from the perspective of Anthony Holmes, an IBM Accelerated Value Program Leader (Premium Support Program).

Working Collaboration Blog

Pavlov’s Emails

Anthony Holmes  23 January 2012 01:07:02 PM
Image:Pavlov’s Emails
Over the last two years I've made big changes to the way that I work as I've adopted IBM Connections. But I recently discovered that I've still got a way to go.

Email is classically addictive. The "you've got mail" sound, popup, flashing light, little email envelope, whatever, holds out the possibility that somebody has just sent you something very important/exciting/amusing. You salivate at the prospect, interrupt what you are doing and open the email. I've been weaning myself off hovering over my inboxes, but I haven't succeeded.

I jog around The Tan in Melbourne in the late evening 2-4 times each week. On the basis that you can't improve if you aren't measuring, I take it fairly seriously: I have a Polar RCX5 watch with heart monitor and GPS to let me measure my times and improve them. So you'd think I'd be pretty focussed while running.

The other night at about 11pm on a Friday I took my phone with me because I was on-call and needed to respond if I got a text. I didn't get any texts. Instead, half way through the run I saw that I had a new email.

The urge to read the email - perhaps while I was still running, was overwhelming.

I resisted. But as I sat down at the end of my run (and read the terribly unimportant email), I reflected on the fact that I am still hooked on email.

So:
  • If something is urgent, people can phone me or walk up to me.
  • They can try pinging me on Sametime, but if I don't respond, see above.
  • When I'm working, I will define when I read email, rather than email telling me.
  • As a general rule I will look at email when I want to take a clear break from another activity. At most every 1.5 to two hours.
  • Never, during an unplanned break, will I check my email. I will always wait until my previously nominated 'email checking' time.
  • When I get an email that I'm not actioning immediately, but which I need to respond to, I lift it out of the inbox and into either an eProductivity GTD action or an IBM Connections Activity. That means the task can then be queued and acted upon independently of the random incoherent stream of the inbox, and into a structured set of priorities.

Using Social Software like IBM Connections doesn't require that email be completely abandoned: it still has a useful role. But I think that it's very important to ensure that email works for you instead of the other way around.