Jason M. Hanley :: Custom Software Developer

SPAM email. Everyone hates it. Company and individuals alike have built various systems for dealing with it, but from what I hear, most solutions are sub-optimal.

I currently receive about 365 spam emails per day. 290 in my personal account, and 75 in my work account.

But I hardly ever have to think about this!

That’s because I use hosted Gmail for both my personal and work accounts. Every time a spam email makes it through. I simply check it, and hit the “Report Spam” button. Hundreds of thousands of others do this every day. Then, the Google algorithm goes through and figures out which emails are spam based on this aggregate result.
It ends up being extremely accurate. I’ve only had 2 or 3 false positives* over the past 3 years I’ve used Gmail.

Because of this, I can confidently ignore the spam/junk folder. Gmail saves these messages for 30 days — just in case.

Yet another reason to use hosted Google services…

*A false positive is a legitimate email that gets marked as spam.

In the business world, there are phone people, and there are email people. I’ll admit right upfront that I’m an email person. There are situations when phone or face-to-face meetings are necessary or more appropriate, but for most day to day issues, I think email is great.

Consider this scenario: I send an email checking on the status of something. The other person gets the email, and realizes they need to ask me something that basically requires a yes or no answer.

Instead of emailing, they phone me. Naturally, I miss the call and they leave me a long message re-explaining the entire situation, asking me the question, and leaving their contact information and the times they can be reached.

I have to log into my voicemail, retrieve the message, listen to it (possibly more than once) and take down the contact info. Then I call them back — and, you guessed it — they’re not available. By the time I finally get them tracked down and give them their answer, I’ve probably spent a good 10-15 minutes intermixed with other tasks. That’s not that long, you say. Perhaps not on its own, but that’s not the only issue I have to deal with in a day.

Let’s be very conservative and say that I only have 10 such issues per day:

• Email: 1-2 minutes to reply x 10 incidents = 10-20 minutes per day
• Phone: 10-15 minutes to reply x 10 incidents = 1.5-3 hours per day

So with email, I can be about 900% more efficient. Is this a no-brainer, or am I missing something here?

There’s a great little article over at What’s the next action about how to make an effective To-Do list. If you don’t find making lists effective, it might be because you’re doing it wrong!

Some of the key points are:

1. Use verbs: Everything on the list needs to be actionable, which generally means it should start with a verb.
2. Be specific: If an action isn’t specific enough, it’s easy to defer it since you don’t really know what the “next action” is.
3. Group by context: Group your tasks by context. (at the computer, on the phone, running errands, etc.)
4. Focus on “next”: Filter out everything except the very next task for each context.

Tim Ferriss (author of the 4 Hour Workweek) recently posted a great list of “stressful and common habits that entrepreneurs and office workers should strive to eliminate.”

My two favorites:
1. Do not answer calls from unrecognized phone numbers (I never do)
4. Do not let people ramble (I almost always answer personal calls with “Hey, what’s up?” and business calls with “Hi, what can I do for you?”

A couple of the worst possible ways you can manage people:

• Ostrich mentality (a.k.a. Head in the sand): Refers to the “ignore it and it will go away” attitude. Some managers think that if they just “leave it until next week” somehow the problem will just go away. No. It’ll get worse. Act on it now.
• Ditch digging theory of management: This is the belief that every task in business is the same as simple manual labour (like digging a ditch). In other words, they think that to make a project go faster, they just need to add more people (”horsepower”). No. Often adding more people to a complex project will just slow things down. Some things just take time.
• Warm body theory of management: This is a person pet peeve of mine because I see it everywhere. This is the belief that people (”warm bodies”) in the office, sitting at their desk somehow equals productivity. Some managers frown on personal time, and reward people who are there every day from 7am until 9pm. No. This will just cause burnout. Those people sitting at their desks are not being productive. They’re playing solitaire… or reading this blog.