Computer Time Management

Do you just keep saving files & pretty soon things are out of hand?  On the weekend I took some time to sort thru a bunch of folders & organized the files by topic.  (Now I probably won’t be able to find anything!)  Hopefully it will save time.

Then I decided to catch up on my blog reading & came across this post:

Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive How to Do Email and RSS Just Once a Day ? and Boost Productivity in the Process «

Yeah, uh huh … how to do email once a day & boost productivity!  So that sucked me in & I thought I would share it with you.  RSS (blog reading) doesn’t affect my time management because I catch up on blogs about once a week.  After reading that though, I pared down my blogs in my reader down to a manageable amount based on:

  • how often I read the blog
  • the content of the blog - do most posts hold my attention?

 Then I attacked my email:

  • I started scrolling & instead of deleting, I would unsubscribe if it was a newsletter.  Then I searched & deleted all old ones from that source.
  • As I moved down thru my email, I was able to wipe out a lot of ‘junk’ that way.  And hopefully turned much of it off.  I kept the ones that I read.
  • I have folders set up in Thunderbird which I love & would die without.  (If you want to use Thunderbird to read your Google mail in it, I have some news coming for you on that)

Now, I’m a fairly organized person & LOVE how Evernote keeps my lists & life in order, so I consider myself fairly ok in that respect.  But I’m not sure I could survive by reading email only once a day!  ack!!  But they do have some good ideas there. 

Web Worker Daily is a nifty blog & I thought many of you may like it since that describes you!  Did you notice that they don’t mention IM, can we say Hello!?  *grin*  I love being interrupted by my friends on Hello & even ACDSee questions. 

So does anyone do email only once a day?  Would you find that challenging? or could you go cold turkey… I mean adjust?  I’m curious to hear your thoughts!  How do you keep your desktop & email organized?  Is it a struggle or do you have a great system?


Posted on : Jul 30 2007
Posted under Organization, Other |

5 People have left comments on this post

Jul 31, 2007 - 06:07:50
Hummie said:

Oh, yes, e-mail once a day would kill me! LOL! But I do have it parred way down. I always go through every so often and unsub from things. I just am in some busy groups!

I have things sorted into folders and often mass delete ads.

I was parring down my RSS too the other day, but with it, it is even easier to mass delete if I need to…I started just putting a “*” in front of the ones I don’t want to miss.

Hey, I just nominated you for the Rockin Girl award!

Aug 4, 2007 - 01:08:11
jan said:

Email once a day would be difficult. When I worked outside the home, doing email once a day at home was pretty standard, and sometimes it even took more than one day to get to it. After all, I wasn’t home much! But now that I work from within the home, I look at my email differently. I don’t have the “water cooler” chat opportunities that I used to have, and email often substitutes for that (as does IM). Ask the average office worker if they could come in and solely work — without chatting around the office or any primarily social activity! It wouldn’t happen (and, it wouldn’t be great for overall office productivity, either — we need that socialization opportunity to keep the business side of things running smoothly, too!).
I, too, use folders & rules to snag & organize items as they come in, so that does help minimize the time I spend in email categories. And I occasionally will cull out blog stops or newsletters, or mass delete ads, too. But we’re definitely dealing with an increasing amount of information in the world, and it is very easy to “overload”. (If I go back to working outside the home, as I’m thinking of doing, I’m really going to have to simplify what I have coming into my various home accounts!)
One other thing I’ve done: I actually keep folders in my list of IE Favorites for Daily, Weekly, & Monthly stops. (And within the weekly, I have folders for each day of the week.) And I’m constantly readjusting the Daily stops, too, as I see that the material changes, or my interests change.
A good vacation (and away from the computer!) also helps to make you re-think what’s really a priority!

Aug 4, 2007 - 07:08:16
Pam said:

Connie, thanks for the tip on Evernote. I downloaded it that same day. It’s great.

Aug 4, 2007 - 10:08:16
Connie said:

I agree that if email is how you’re transacting business then checking just once a day may not be realistic. For me dealing with it immediately is maybe more important.

At my work, I have the phone off to the side & email is definitely my primary means of communication.

Aug 12, 2007 - 08:08:38
Mrs S said:

I read that article too - I did what they said about my google reader and ditched the blogs I don’t read very often. But email once a day? Nope… I use email as my main communication tool for my day job so it needs to be checked all the time - I have however turned off my desktop notifications so that I don’t get distracted by new emails quite so much!