brett's logjam

Marco Island, Florida. February 2010.

Taken at Historic Jamestowne.

Looking up at the chandelier in the rotunda inside Jamestowne Settlement. I’ve spent a lot of time there of late.

There are some days where living outside a major city has its drawbacks. Farmers Markets are 5 out of the top 10 things to do on the weekend. I’ve been to more tractor pulls than I ever thought I’d see.

But there are other days, quiet days, spent walking by the river with my son, listening to the wind and the birds, which remind me how absolutely lucky I am.

When I first discovered I was going to become a father, I was really overwhelmed by the feeling of WOW.

The second time is just as awesome, but a lot less nerve-wracking. It’s just plain exciting.

Merrystar and I are expecting a baby girl sometime around July 28th. T is very excited about his new little sister.

As are we all.

Yeah, I took another vacation, this time down to Marco Island, Florida.

I, along with much of my family, had the flu down there. But really - there are worse places to have the flu.

The first few days were foggy. That’s okay. I like foggy beaches.

And then it was windy, and then it was calm. Very, very calm.

More photos are on Flickr.

I finished up my year-long project in November with a lot of delayed vacation to take and a need to do something very mindless for a while. The mantra I’d learned at Trilogy still remains: shipping code is the only thing. And we shipped, and shipped it on time, but I was really ready for a break.

So I used most of my vacation to take most December off and do a whole lot of nuthin’. And that meant a whole lot of not doing stuff on the internet, which was a surprising relief.

Instead, I picked up a video game. World of Warcraft, to be exact.

You know what? Tons of fun. Love it. It’s gorgeous, immersive, and exciting to explore. But I’m also glad that I’m trying it out now, in my mid-thirties with a family and job, and not in my single early twenties. I totally see why people spend to much time on it.

But best of all, even though I was online, I didn’t feel any stress about it.

The stress of being online is the stress of wanting to do quality work for you to see. Is a post well-written and interesting, is this tweet funny, is this picture any good? All small questions that aren’t a big deal unless you’re really ready to set it all aside.

The only stress I felt in World of Warcraft was how to kite some mobs, or apply my DoTs in the best order. I mean, c’mon — the worst that can happen is that you die and have to spend a few minutes running back to your corpse. It’s not a high pressure situation.

Anyhow. I spent a lot of time on my vacation running around with my wife and kid. I twittered about it, a little. I played some video games and took a few pictures, some of which will be making their way online.

Eventually.

There just seems to be less of a rush now.

I came back from my two-week vacation this week, ignored my overflowing inbox for two days, and then demolished it in under two hours. No stress, just 800 email messages gone and me getting back to work.

Here’s how I did it.

• Archive everything into a single folder and use search. In Outlook, I create a rule that puts a copy of everything that comes into my Inbox into a folder called Archive. I always have a copy filed away without ever having to think about it.
• Don’t manage tasks out of your inbox. Read each email and ask: do I need to do something here? Put it on your task list and then delete the message.
• Delete ruthlessly. Once you’ve extracted whatever information or tasks you have from a message, delete it. Don’t leave it hanging around in your Inbox taking up mental space — it’s already filed in your Archive!
• Read in Conversation view. Most Outlook users top-post (it’s the default), so any given message will contain the entire thread in it. Conversation view (or Threaded view) lets you delete the entire thread once you’re done.
• Work in chunks. Spending all day in your email is a good way to not get any real work done; process it twice a day and then get back to work.

I’m really a big fan of deleting my email. Deleting is satisfying. It says: I have extracted what I need out of this message, and it no longer serves any purpose. Deleting is also quick. It is a single button to push, a single action to take. There is no thought about where to file a message — just remove it from the queue.

My strategy is directly influenced from two places: The Best Outlook Tip in the World, and Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero series. I used to be a compulsive Ctrl-Shift-V email filer, but watching Merlin’s Inbox Zero video really changed how I thought about email.

This system may not be right for you. It’s not even always right for me.

But this week, it worked pretty well.