I’ve not long finished reading a really interesting book by Tim Ferris titled 4 hour working week and there were some interesting take-always for me which could potentially work in my situation.
I do wonder how some of the concepts introduced would work for most people though, and in particular I’m referring to his slant on email communications. Tim asserts that email is too intrusive and one should aim to read and respond far less frequently than most of us do.
Consider how “helpful technology” has enabled us to receive and read our emails at any time in any location on a myriad of different devices, and the culture this appears to have driven…. A culture of email appearing to be an urgent communication. I have witnessed (and indeed have succumbed to) MS Outlook appearing to drive daily activity of email conversations. Tim suggests that an auto responder should be set to reply with a clear message setting expectations that a response will be delayed to preset times each day, or even each week (over time as part of a transition plan).
Personally I like this idea, as I agree that email has become far too intrusive and that there is no better way of urgently communicating, than the telephone, after all we all have at least one and it is good to talk.
I reckon if we all decided to treat email as a communication tool rather than our god, then we would almost certainly increase our overall productivity, and get far more done.
But what do I know… Happy Christmas everyone and remember to put your out of office on.
Graham Bunting -The Partner Catalyst 