Curatorialist

Over the last three months, I’ve had zero emails in my inbox about 75% of the time. It rarely gets above 20 emails and, when it does, I can get it down to zero in minutes. I implemented a custom system for myself that has freed me from the chains of piling-up emails which, let’s be honest, becomes your daily To-Do list. But worse, it’s a source of constant stress and actually works against productivity.  The camel’s back broke for me one night when Amanda asked me what I did at work all day, and my answer was: Emails. I didn’t ever want to have to say that again. So, I came up with a system. Works for me, so I thought I’d share it.

1. Divert.

Emails must be sorted and filed BEFORE you read them. This cuts down the largest portion of incoming mail. Here’s how you do it:

1. Create a folder structure for your mail. Mine looks like this: Articles, CC’d, Events, Newsletters, Personal, To Do, Travel, URLs, Work. Then I have sub-folders within Personal and Work. You don’t have to follow that structure, your life is what it is. But for me, this covers just about any kind of email that could come in (or needs to be filed). And some of them are very strategic. I’ll get to that.
2. Use Rules. This is a big one. In Entourage, it’s under Tools. Click on New and you’ll get something like this:  As you’ll see, the options are plenty. They key is to create enough rules to handle nearly every TYPE of email that comes in.
3. Specific Rules. Some Rules apply to just you – I get a lot of All Company emails, for example, so I made a rule that sends anything that has our all-company address in the To: field straight to a folder called All Company. I also get a lot of “Hot sheets,” sometimes spelled as two words, sometimes as one. I have ONE rule that sends any email with either spelling to a folder called “Hot sheets.”
4. Key Rules. Here’s where we get to the important stuff. You need a rule for any email that comes in with HTML in it. I send all those to the folder called “Newsletters.”  This covers ALL junk that isn’t being caught by my Junk filter. It also covers anything you’ve subscribed to. Because they all use HTML to embed images. And then I highly recommend one for CC’s. Any time you are CC’d on an email, have it go to a CC’s folder. And then, lastly, make a To Do folder. The rule on this is to have any email where the subject is “To Do” and the sender is YOU to be moved to a folder called To Do.

You can see what’s happened here. For the most part, all your emails will now be sent to sub-folders. I know what you’re saying. What if I miss an important email from my boss, family, friend, girlfriend??

2. Exemptions.

The Rules box is broken up into two main sections: IF and THEN. And you can add as many IFs and as many THENs as you want. And one of the IFs functions is called “Is Not.” For any rule that you want an exemption for, add another If/Is Not. Those will be unaffected by the rule and go straight to your inbox.

3. To-Do.

This is a new habit. Get ready. I noticed that I was keeping emails in my inbox as a reminder to take care of something. It had become my To Do list. I would even send myself emails to remind myself to do something. The problem with this is that a) it doesn’t prioritize your To-Do’s very well and b) you’re mixing To-Do’s with memos and everything else. Untie yourself from this construct. If an email prompts you to do something, add the To-Do item to an ongoing email, called To Do, that you respond to and email back to yourself . Then delete the former one.  This does a couple things:

1. It keeps all your action items in one place, which you can print or adjust whenever you want.
2. Psychologically, it’s one email instead of tens, or hundreds. It has an amazing calming effect.
3. You will start to prioritize in a completely different way. When it’s not in your inbox, you have to make a decision: am I doing my To-Do’s right now, or am I in a meeting, or am I brainstorming, or writing an article, or whatever. Just the act of forcing that behavior starts to reorganize your life in better, more productive ways.

And then, because you have a rule for your To-Do to go to its own folder, that’s not even in your in-box. And there you go.

But what to do with all the emails going into those other folders?

4. Reading behavior.

We tend to read emails in order, by date. Until one comes in that catches our eye, or is from someone that pushes a hot button. It’s not necessarily more “important” than what we’re doing, but it’s shiny. And we can’t avoid it. The reading behavior gets all messed up because you’re simultaneously answering in order AND by shiny-ness. The hummingbird effect. Diverting emails eliminates this behavior.

But emails will start to compile within folders.

The great thing about this system is that each folder is a different mindset. Newsletters is a mindset. You can scan and purge newsletters very quickly. I get over a hundred a day, but I can scan them all in under 60 seconds and then Mark All As Read: Command+Option+T. That’s 100 emails in a minute, dealt with. Because they all obey the same function in my life: information/news. In essence, that folder is an RSS feed.

CC’d is a different mindset. That’s work stuff, but that isn’t directly to me. I can check that throughout the day, knowing that it’s not urgent. I’ll take a little more time with those, scanning for issues or things I might want to chime in on. But it’s not stressful, not urgent.

All Company Emails I check maybe once a day, sometimes twice. And the ones from the brass go straight to my inbox, because of my exemption, anyway. That’s a 30 second scan.

And then there’s emails from friends and family. This is a tough one. You know who these people are in your life – your circle. This is going to hurt, but you have to send it all to a folder, too. Mine is called “Discussions” and is nestled into Personal. I hope any friends or family reading this aren’t offended, but it is specifically because of how interesting these people are that I must divert them. When I’m at work, there is almost no down time. It is constant. And when there isn’t a meeting going on, I want to be focused on my clients’ business. Discussing things with friends and family on email is actually one of my favorite things to do, that’s the problem. I could do it ALL DAY LONG. I have to force myself into the habit of carving out that time, not having it carve into mine. And I actually pay more attention to the words this way.

So, what does end up in my in-box? They tend to be important issues. Emails come in to my inbox slowly now, but each one is a very valid need, almost always about work. And that’s how it should be. It has decreased my stress and focused my attention. Email is barely an issue for me anymore.

Hope that’s helpful. Wait’ll I tell you about my bookmark system.

You know what I learned from SXSW? That I could totally make TED better.

From my POV, TED and SXSW are almost completely opposite from each other – but each needs what the other has.

TED’s motto is “Ideas Worth Spreading.” SXSW’s is “Tomorrow Happens Here.” And that says a lot. TED speeches are amazing. My mind has been blown many times from the videos I’ve seen coming out of there. But the next day, I’m onto my business and it hardly ever comes up again, except in dinner conversations. The ideas are worth spreading, but the emphasis is on the worthiness of the ideas, not the spreadability of them. Enter SXSW…

SXSW is about the spreading, often at the expense of the idea. People gather, make plans, share code, talk shop and scheme about new systems and collaborations. And usually the subject is the social web; new tools for connecting. And they’re do-ers. Makers. Tinkerers. Sure, a major portion of the ideas you hear about will end up being nothing more than lonely code, but there’s an energy of making things happen at SXSW. It has a laboratory feel. I was sitting at a table last night, talking through an idea and the people at that table, literally, could have made that idea. There were coders sitting next to artists, writers, producers and publicists. All we needed was computers and phones. And the likeliness of that idea getting made is actually pretty high. Because I know who to call and we all broke bread together.

SXSW is kind of strangely devoid of tangible results – that is, there are so many ideas, proposals, speeches and programs that you tend to get cynical because you just know they’re not all going to get traction. Just check out Paul Carr’s rant on Tech Crunch. It’s not that Carr is completely wrong, it’s that he belongs at TED. He’s looking for a finished idea for proof of worthiness. He should be at the conference that celebrates that. But that conference could learn something from SXSW, too.

I know I could turn TED into a place where ideas actually do spread. But it would be a chiropractic shift in how they organize it. I doubt that they’d ever embrace or try it, for two major reasons:

1. It’s apostle-based. TED does celebrate the inventor, the genius and the bringer of good, there is no doubt. It is an event for the “best and brightest” and those that are allowed to attend are of the same ilk. I think the strategy is to invite influencers and those with the kind of capital and following to make these ideas come true, It’s an old process for the spreading of ideas, invented in Ancient Greece and Rome. And it’s outdated.

I know people who go to TED. They’re leaders. And leaders are delegators. They tackle large issues and hand off the small ones – whatever system they work in needs that kind of top down approach. But that’s not how spreading happens anymore, not on a grand scale. Even the most dynamically enthused TED conference-goer, is too limited, in terms of reach. Impassioned speeches are simply not the tipping point for great ideas.

TED would have to break down the structure of who’s invited and who participates in order for this to work and I worry they’re not interested in that. They have created a club that I think appeals to the egos of those who get to go (it certainly would if I went), and that ego-stroking is tough to let go of. It’s too seductive.

2. Open source is complex. The other major hurdle to TED becoming more contemporary in how it spreads ideas is that the organization of their program is a relatively simple closed loop system. There are a number of complexities that surround the event – certainly the work being done by the participants is enormously complex – but the conference itself could be organized by any event planner. The invitations process, the event production and the website all employ very standard approaches.

TED needs to look at how SXSW organizes their event, perhaps even hijack it. It is a study in de-centralization. It is, itself, an open API. For TED to do that, they’d need to make available a lot more data, besides just the videos. In fact, the videos are perhaps the least important part of it. The videos should be the invitation to the event, not the result of the event. What happens next needs to be a collaborative and iterative process of geniuses, organizers, builders and social media experts.

Is TED ready to organize an open source event of that complexity? I doubt it. They have too gorgeous a package right now. It would mean a Charlize Theron-in-Monster-like ability to let go of what it’s famous for and expand itself through a destruction of its current image. Tough stuff.

TED needs what SXSW has. And SXSW needs what TED has. In some combined way, though, they could Make Ideas Happen. I wish they would.

Hell, I would organize it myself. I could do it, too. Just let me in the club.

So, here are the sites that I noticed on guru of new @scobleizer’s Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox during his presentation. Not that I was staring, obsessing, learning, adapting, growing… stronger. If these sites are good enough for him to keep prominent, they’re good enough for the rest of us:

1. New York Times – Bits Blog

2. Boing Boing

3. Switched

4. Engadget

5. BuzzFeed

And these were sites/apps he mentioned or visited during the presentation:

Google Buzz

TweetDeck

Foursquare

Techmeme

Google Blue Dot

The Cadmus

Gowalla

Bonus: this site was actually shown during a discussion with @bs from Twitter itself. I guess they just put this together for SXSW this year, you know, on a whim. Cuz they do that:

SXSW/Twitter

Extra Bonus: I recommend requesting your free trial of Tap11. It’s like TweetDeck, but with charts and metrics and numbers. Keep track of your brand, natch!

Tap11

As I prepare myself for my first trip to SXSW, I’m trying to sift through this insane dust cloud of activity that seems to descend upon Austin. But, you know, I’ve been to conferences before. I’ve sifted through complication before. I’m not a little baby, wandering naked into a zoo with no locks on the cages. Not since the 70’s. This is an event, after all, like any other – panels, speeches, discussions, movies, get-togethers, etc. I think I’ve done this before. It gets slightly more noisy at SXSW, I guess, because of all the social networking. But haven’t all conferences had social networking… forever? You participate, or you don’t. And, really, it’s just talk. Once again, those of use who make messages are getting caught up in the medium.The real sifting one has to do is news versus noise. I’m on a mission to learn something and although the experience of being at SXSW sounds kind of exciting, so are a lot of things. I’m not on a mission to be excited. The last 10 years have been too exciting, as far as I’m concerned. Digital has become legitimate on the knotted shoulders of those of us who’ve stuck with it and built it. And make no mistake, hype is not what built the Internet – real companies, like the ones we work for, are who build it, for their real business needs. The rest is entertainment. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’m more interested in what’s going to change the way businesses run.

So, I’m preparing myself. How to take in the best panels, hear from the top minds and maybe accomplish the promise that SXSW poses: TOMORROW HAPPENS HERE. We can’t rely on Twitter to tell us what the future holds. Twitter just is now. Oh, I’ll be hooked in to the hashtag hoi poloi, don’t worry. But I don’t want to look back, I want to look forward. But first… prepare.

So, I’m at the page for “first timers:” http://sxsw.com/first_time and I am greeted with this nice lead-in paragraph: “SXSW can be overwhelming to first-timers. All the things that make SXSW amazingly informative, fun and unique are also what can make it so daunting. We’ve made a video to show you what SXSW is. Watch it below:” Okay, I’m on it. Don’t love being categorized as a noob, but whatever, nobody’s watching…

HOLY CRAP. Am I supposed to be less daunted from this? A montage? And not just a montage, which daunts me, but a sped-up montage, with music! And the organization of information in this video seems to follow a “5 Days Of…” mechanism. You fit all this into five days? Even if this were put to Yo-Yo Ma, I’d be a little stressed out with how to take it all in. But scroll down; travel tips, hotel tips, dress tips… hold on, are they really giving me dressing tips? Hm. Starting to feel a little like that naked baby, all of the sudden. And, content-wise, what’s new here that I haven’t seen on a hundred conference websites? Let’s look at the panels.

I’m here for Interactive, specifically. Some interesting topics, to be sure: “The Young and the Digital.” Sounds good. “How Sci-Fi Shapes the Internet.” Interested. But, hey, what’s this: “How to Rowk SXSW.” Uh oh. That sounds awfully self-reflective. Especially when described as “Veteran SXSW speakers and attendees give their light-hearted insights and tips on making the most of your next few days in geek wunderland.” Whaaaa… where’s my bottle! And, as an aside, is misspelling words with the same amount of letters as the original word really our future? Didn’t that end with using Z’s instead of S’s? Moving on. Oh no, look at this: “How Not to be a Douchebag at SXSW.” Yeah, that’s a real panel. And perhaps the single most perfect example of irony ever constructed. So, you self-prescribed elitists, with your superior knowledge would like to impart upon us lesser-thans a warning about how not to be elitist and superior sounding, I suppose? Can somebody please call Keith Olbermann? I’d like him tackle this.

Let’s look outside the SXSW fold for a minute. Mmm, this is getting worse. Here’s an article called, oh god, “10 Ways Not To Be A Jerk at SXSW.”

Well, now I’m angry.

I’m angry, not just because this couldn’t be less helpful or more obvious, but because of the tone. Is this the voice of a new generation? It sounds like the voice of the old generation. It sounds like Silicon Valley elitism and entitlement all over again. It sounds like people I don’t want to work with, or know, or follow, or put on my Twitter List. And, unlike the pre-2000 days, where I didn’t have a choice, I really do have a choice now. Digital is legitimate. The best minds are the winners of the day, not the biggest attitudes. I know that’s what the article is trying to convey, too. But name calling isn’t necessary. We’re big boys now.

So, I believe my preparation is complete. Noise is, as it turns out, noise. I unfortunately won’t be attending the Music portion of SXSW, but I will be tackling this like I would that: trusting my ear and listening to one thing at a time with the kind of attention and appreciation that the people who are singing deserve. In that video, at 1:20, some dude dressed in all black said it pretty well, “The joy of learning and doing something new and doing something the way it really feels right – right here, right here and right here.” And he pointed to his gut, his heart and his head.