gf-tech.com

A couple weeks back the office I work in lost the network connection. Technically we had a network, but DNS was slow to resolve, and we definitely couldn't get to the Internet.

I had a bit of an epiphany about how I work during this outage. I could still work slowly, but I certainly wasn't effective. I decided that I subconsciously solve problems.

My habits are to work for a while, but when I hit a stumbling block in what I was trying to accomplish, I would change contexts entirely and hit a blog, Twitter, or some other site for a couple minutes.

During this break from my work, my subconscious would solve the problem, or at least get me refocussed and when I resumed my task I would pick up and continue right where I left off.

Not having the Internet actually slowed my work down considerably (and not because I couldn't Google the answer).

Several productivity sites I frequent all suggest that the Internet is a distraction and it must be blocked to allow yourself to realize your full productivity. I don't fit that mould.

Time to do some reading. I was poking around the mall today and ended up outside Cole's bookstore. On a whim I checked the business section and saw they had a copy of David Allen's Getting Things Done, so I bought it.

I've been reading about GTD on several websites (like LifeHacker), and have really liked some of the processes and ideals. Seems like a good idea for me to read the source of all these tips and tricks.

I'm pretty excited to get reading this book. Who knows where this might lead.

Once I have read the book and absorbed it, I will see if I want to modify any of my works processes. More on this later.

I use Eudora for email both at work and at home. Currently I use the sponsored more of Eudora which displays a small that that is easily ignorable.

There are many reasons why I use Eudora, and most of them revolve around useability of the application. I was first introduced to Eudora in University circa 1993. It was all I could use for a number of years, and as a student, the free option is always a good thing.

When I entered my professional career I continued using Eudora, even when the norm was Outlook. I stuck with it because I liked the options, still considered it feature rich, and it allowed me to get my work done.

One feature I like is the ability to detach mailboxes. I am not constrained by my mail application to only see mail in one mailbox. The below view shows 4 mailboxes. The upper left mailbox is my inbox, and I keep this one on top. The other visible mailboxes are current projects I am working on.

My mailbox browser is detachable, and I generally keep it on a second monitor.

This combination allows me to quickly see new email arrive in my one inbox, deal with it, then place it in the correct folder. Email that I want to deal with later gets marked as Unread. This is how I deal with my email, and this is where Outlook fails (and Thunderbird when I last tried it).

In Eudora one of the more powerful features is the filtering options. Below is the filter creation dialog.

One of the filtering features I use a lot is the Manual option for a filter. This allows me to create a filter that only runs when I tell it to, and only on messages that I have selected. Powerful feature. At work I deal with entering bugs for a third party product. Each correspondence with this third party has a bug Id. When I enter a new bug, I create a new mailbox to house email for that bug. When I get email pertaining to that bug I read it, reply to it, then filter this email off to the mailbox by hitting a quick key combo. I do this with the manual filter option. I love this. Quick and easy.

This is where Outlook fails me. There is no option to do this. Filters get run on new mail as it arrives, and email gets shunted to mailboxes (if I set the filter to do that). Now for me to read new email I have to start weeding through multiple mailboxes. No way I want to do that. Too time consuming and too easy to miss a message. The alternative is to let all email arrive in the inbox, and move it by hand. Again, too much work that I don't want to handle.

This week I trialed AutoMate by Pergenex. This was a promising plugin since it seemed to add a lot of missing filtering functionality to Outlook. Sadly it will not help me since I cannot set filters to run only on selected messages. There is an option to run filters after a period of time (no indication of how long this is), but it runs over an entire folder, and not on selected messages.

So, I live on with Eudora. I want to join the Outlook crowd at work since Outlook has an integrated calendar and people at work tend to like meeting requests. This is the biggest reason I want to use Outlook, but its shortcomings prevent me from moving over. I could live with the single monitor constraint that Outlook has, and I could even live with the single mailbox view at a time, but I can't live without my filters.

When I worked at VoiceMobility I was fortunate to have an office. I loved my office. It was my home away from home. It was my space to work in. It was comfortable. I controlled the lights, I controlled the temperature (to some degree), I controlled the sounds levels inside my office. The most important thing about my office was that it had a door.

When I really needed to get things done I could shut the door, and drown out the office sounds. I could turn up the music, shut out the outside world and concentrate. Co-workers seeing the door shut immediately knew I should not be disturbed.

When I left the voice mob I lost my office. NewHeights has offices for some developers, but not all. Many developers or QA people share offices. I think most software developement offices are like this, and I think it is a shame. Working in the cube that I have is way more distracting. Some days are definitely worse than others. The last few days I have found particularly bad as there have been hallway conversations on the other side of my cube wall. Aside: I need to be more assertive in those situations, and ask the people to move to a meeting room.

After moving to NewHeights I stumbled across LifeHacker. This website is dedicated to helping computer users to avoid the pitfalls of computer related distractions, and to get to the task at hand. It is a large collection of tips and tricks to enable to be "Getting Things Done".

After reading their article titled: Firewall your attention at the office, I have been thinking a lot about this topic. I have followed some of the sites tips, but this article really resonated with me.

Some tips I have taken away from this site are:
1) Automatically checking email happens every half hour. I turned off all notifications of new email (no popups, no sounds). In fact I disabled all "toast popups" that many apps seem to be fond of. I kept the ones that inform me of critical issues. I wish there was a way I could disable the windows system tray popups too. They are very distracting.

2) I use a feed reader to follow webpages and blogs. Only at certain times of day will I run RSS Bandit. This is configured to only update feeds once a day, except for some emergency information feeds, and all my internal to work feeds. While it is not running I resist temptation to start it.

3) I listen to music with headphones (added benefit: partially drowning out background noise). I work better to music, so this is definitely a win-win for me.

4) I use the "busy" status on MSN Messenger, and I set my phone to DND mode when I am concentrating. This doesn't always work as some people still MSN me, or just walk to my desk to ask me a question when I don't answer the phone.

5) I also try to arrive early to work. I find I can get a lot done while most of the office workers are not there. Less people around can only mean less possible distractions. Of course sometimes the resources I need are not there either, and that will always be a problem.

I think my biggest problem is teaching my co-workers. How can I easily (and nicely) tell everyone that when my headphones are on, my MSN is set to busy, to stay the hell away and let me work? Many people at my office don't run MSN, so can't see my status. Others don't phone or email their questions, but instead ask them face to face. I can't get around this one, and this is the most distracting to me (more in a second).

As far as regular background noise goes, this LifeHacker suggests noise cancelling headphones. I am tempted to try it, but the problem I see is wearing those headphones for several hours. I can't wear the ear bud style headphones for more than half an hour any more. How can these be more comfortable? Instead I have a pair of ear muff style headphones whose biggest problem is that my ears can't breathe, and get quite hot at times. Another LifeHacker article has a list of iPod etiquette for at work. Most are good rules (and common sense), but I know I break the one about "head bopping".

So, how do I re-inforce/teach co-workers when they can and can't interrupt me? Wearing headphones doesn't work. Phone on DND doesn't work. Busy MSN status doesn't work. Ignoring them while I concentrate doesn't work. Many of the upcoming interruptions I acknowledge the co-workers presence, but indicate that they will have to wait until I finish what I am doing. I'd love any tips/tricks anyone out there has.