Inbox Zero

This has become a bit of a meme -- that one should always drive one's email inbox to empty, and not use it as a reading list, filing cabinet, or todo list.

Some solutions for doing so are variations of declaring email bankruptcy and just deleting everything, but I think that's a false and potentially irresponsible solution. As Rory Vaden writes in "Delete This: 7 Tips for Getting Your Inbox to Zero," in Fast Company, "that doesn’t work in the real world. In the real world I have customers, employees, vendors, accountants, family, and friends who are all expecting a response and often needing a response to move initiatives forward in their lives." 

Vaden goes on to write 

And while I do also appreciate the efforts of -- and have derived some value from -- the world's well-meaning "time management experts," I have found that most of them have created systems whose complexities create more stress and work than they solve, or they have strategies that work on their own inboxes because they don’t actually have what resembles a real corporate job with lots of various stakeholders.

So what does work in the real world? I’m not sure that I have the real answer -- in fact I’m pretty sure that I don’t. What I do have is a few survival strategies that seemed to help me keep my beast of an inbox at bay and under some type of reasonable control. ...

While I disagree with some of Vaden's strategies -- saving messages outside of the email system, as Word documents? -- and some are just plain quaint -- have your assistant weed your inbox? -- his tips are generally good. 

Personally, I highly recommend you read Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload, by Mark Hurst. (Reasonably decent summary here.) Hurst covers the key strategy -- act on each message or delegate, defer, delete, archive, or ignore it -- in addition to offering some useful philosophical perspectives. 

Update on Wednesday, February 20, 2013 at 09:23AM by williamgarrity

The first step to managing your inbox is to keep messages out of it in the first place.

• Keep your work email account pure. Establish a free Gmail or Outlook.com account (not Yahoo , which seems to be a favorite service for spammers) and use it to sign up for bulletins listservs, digests, shopping sites, etc. 
• Eliminate unecessary email notifications from social media. 

Update on Friday, February 22, 2013 at 07:00PM by williamgarrity

http://lifehacker.com/5986204/automatically-clean-up-gmail-on-a-schedule-with-this-script 

Agility

The Altimeter Group's Jeremiah Owyang writes about how big companies (organizations) can be nimble and innovative. 

Future Proofing: Ten Ways Big Companies are Staying Agile

Posted on February 15th, 2013

A CEO of a new startup in Silicon Valley confided in me over beers that he said it’s easy for startups to disrupt big companies as they’re so busy internally fighting themselves. He’s right, I mostly see companies in internal battles and struggles over resources and power, leaving them exposed to outside startups. Coincidently, may of the startups I see disrupting large companies are composed of ex-employees who recombine as they know the weaknesses to exploit these larger companies, damning! To stay Future Proof, I’m seeing at least ten trends larger corporations are applying in the last year to stay lean and agile. 

I particularly appreciate 

• #4 -- sourcing ideas from employees outside the R&D shops 
• #5 -- visiting other organizations that are (perceived to be) innovative 
• #6 -- "passion projects" (for example, Google's 20% idea -- that (some) staff are expected to dedicate a chunk of their time to innovation) 
• #7 -- outside-in innovation -- bring your customers (clientele, users) in to help 

Full list and more at link. 

Social Media: Logging In

This piece in Lifehacker addresses an important question -- why do various social sites ask for your Facebook, Google, Twitter credentials as their login information? -- and an associated todo.

Is There Any Reason Not to Use My Social Network Account to Sign Into Apps?

By Thorin Klosowski

Dear Lifehacker,

Why do all these apps on my phone and on the web want my Facebook (or Twitter and Google) information to sign up for an account? Is it safe to use these?

Sincerely,

Signing Off?

Dear SO,

Social logins are pretty common these days. You need a Twitter, Facebook, or Google account for a lot of services. Sites and apps want to link to your social network account for two main reasons: authentication (it saves them from storing your password and info), and to collect your data from you social network. Here's what each of them do, and why you might not want to use them. 

Story continues at link. 

The associated todo is, every month -- mark your calendar! -- following the steps indicated to check the application permissions set in your Facebook, Google, Twitter accounts. This maintenance will help protect your private information and avoid embarrassing public posts. 

WSJ's Mossberg Predictions for 2013

Of the several 2013 prediction lists about which I've posted, the one from The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg in his All Things D(igital) column/blog is the most apt one concerning personal technology.

2013: Talk Gets Cheaper, TV Gets Smarter

JANUARY 1, 2013 AT 6:32 PM PT

Personal technology never stops changing. Some new products and services are game changers, like Apple’s iPhone and iPad. Others are clever twists or refinements, like each successive version of Google’s Android platform, which gets better and better. Others are bold gambles, like Microsoft’s new Windows 8, which hopes to combine both a tablet experience and a traditional PC environment in one operating system. But there’s always something new, from large companies and small ones.

So here are a few things consumers will likely see in technology in 2013. Many of these began to take shape in the past year, but will be stronger trends in the new year.

Mossberg sees

• Tablets trending over laptops. 
• Integration of hardware and software -- not just Apple as a long-time practitioner of this, but now Microsoft and Google, as well. 
• "Network TVs." 
• Cheaper smartphones. 
• More choice of music players. 
• Fitness and health monitors. 
• Internet-controlled home devices.  

See the link for the full story. 

Forrester Predictions for 2013 (and Counterpoint)

If Gartner is the leading IT consultancy, Forrester is #2 or 3. (See this comparison of several of the consultancies.)

Forrester likewise identifies technology trends and predictions for 2013. The full report of same, like Gartner'sown research, costs money (check to see if your library/institution has a subscription). This piece -- "Forrester's top 15 emerging technologies to watch" --  in ZDNet summarizes the repor and outlines how the firm categorizes fourteen technologies as 1) end-user computing technologies, 2) sensors and remote computing, 3) process data management, and 4) infrastructure and application platforms. 

(The graphics in the ZDNet piece aren't rendered well)

The counterpoint comes from the iconoclastic tech curmudgeon John Dvorak in PCMag.com -- "Forrester's Top Tech Trends Point to Stagnation" -- 

The research firm has identified 15 top technology trends to watch, but they are all completely bogus. 

As my regular readers know, I love a good list of things to ridicule. Generally speaking, these lists show up in December and January, and they tend either to predict the coming year or lament about the past year.

These sorts of lists are decided differently than all the bogus lists of top 100 executives, which tend to be pure speculation dreamed up by editors over lunch.

So, I was pleasantly surprised to see a list in February that I could comment on: Forrester's top 15 emerging technologies to watch. With a list this long, in an era where there are probably only two or three technologies to watch, I figured this would be worthwhile to tear apart.

Let's begin.

See the link for his article.