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.

“Thirst for knowledge.” That actually turns out to be completely true, studies prove it. The human (and other animal) brain signal the body to release a stimulant as a reward for learning. Pinker’s “if you were to design a being, you’d give it the same qualities” math applies here, too – a system that rewards continued learning, guessing, probing and speculation keeps a species safe from predators. In the end, perhaps, it is not a thirst for knowledge so much as a love of life, but at least I feel a little better about my 2 hour jaunts on Wikipedia. This is life or death, ppl!

Here’s an excerpt:

“Dopamine neurons are thought to be involved in learning about rewards – by adjusting the connections between other neurons, they “teach” the brain to seek basic rewards like food and water. Bromberg-Martin and Hikosaka think that these neurons also teach the brain to seek out information so that their activity becomes a sort of “common currency” that governs both basic needs and a quest for knowledge.”

Read more here.

This website – which matches up simple, but strange, household objects of seemingly lost eras with a writer – seems a lot like a creative writing class assignment. But it gets to the heart of what creativity is, for a lot of people – an assignment with a good inspiration; small, life moments described. Putting one thing with another and watching the chemicals react in the test tube.

Get into it here.

This is the final paragraph of a fascinating study on brains and our innate desire to know what’s going to happen before it happens.

“Dopamine neurons are thought to be involved in learning about rewards – by adjusting the connections between other neurons, they “teach” the brain to seek basic rewards like food and water. Bromberg-Martin and Hikosaka think that these neurons also teach the brain to seek out information so that their activity becomes a sort of “common currency” that governs both basic needs and a quest for knowledge.”

Read the full article here.

This is a nice little article from a nice man with a nice talent for drawing. Something about his story reminds me of a portion of my own, and maybe just everyone pursuing a bit of fine art in their lives. He describes his sort-of happenstance way he came across his career, drawing for theater, dance and music rehearsals. And then says, “It could never happen for anyone the way it happened for me… it was all an accident.” Only that’s just sort of the thing, isn’t it? All creative careers happen that way, being an artist is opening yourself up to situations you wouldn’t otherwise come across. Yes, that particular set of events might never happen again, but equally strange ones do every day to people just like him. The key is to be like him… open to it. Read on:

“Just Drawn That Way” – The New York Times

Paul Arden was a big voice in advertising/art direction in the U.K.  He passed away last year and some folks over at Creative Review sought out to honor him with an article about his top five resources for creative inspiration, when he was needing a little help from the muses. It’s an interesting set of things/artists, but also gets you thinking about what your own are.

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2009/june/ardens-influences

Art is so… fancy. Art tries hard to be cool. Art is bedfellows with intellectuals, critics and scholars. Art dresses in clothes that it feels it should be wearing, because that’s what’s in Vogue. Sketching, on the other hand, wears shorts. Sketching drives a ‘67 Ford Bronco and hides a bag of weeks-old Milano cookies in the glove compartment. Sketching is flippant, carefree and Summery.

No one pays much attention to the sketchers. It’s more like a means to an end. In the early days, sketches laid the foundation of bigger works. The da Vinci sketches, for example, aren’t so much art as a peek into the working mind of an artist. An artist meant for bigger things. The sketches, beautiful sure, but not a destination so much as the twiddling, tinkering, pondering train ride to Gettysburg.

The truth is, it’s all in the sketches. Sketches are the ideas. And Baldessari, Burden, Keinholz and Warhol destroyed the notion that art necessitates execution.With that being the case, I can see an argument for redefining the role of sketches. Or at least our perception of it. The materials and techniques need to advance, though. Watercolors, guache and other lame sounding materials need to give way to more innovative techniques. This site might be paving that way: http://www.urbansketchers.com/ These guys have got the goods, and they seem organized. Pass the cookies, fellas.

“Lighting is everything.” My Mom taught me that at an early age. It wasn’t an art lesson, it was a beauty lesson. But it was an art lesson, too. After all, how you light your subject determines a lot.

Then, when I got into drawing, my Dad sat me down with his long-time friend, Lee Chapman. At the time, Lee lived in a beautiful sprawling house with a pool, up in Laurel Canyon. He was an ad guy, but his true calling was fine art. We had his paintings in our house and I had already heard many stories about his drawing and illustration skills before I had met with him that day. It was intimidating as hell. “So, you like to draw?” I remember him asking me. “Let me show you something.” Continue reading ‘Lighting is everything.’

How many Emails do you get a day? 100? 150? Me too. A little over a year ago, I was sitting in an airport, heading to a pitch with my co-workers. We were all sitting with our collective mobile devices, Emailing away. All of the sudden, I stood up, threw my arms in the air and shouted out, “I’m at ZERO!!” A temporary victory over my Inbox. And although people laughed, it pointed out something sad. Email is the new boss.

Soon after, I started working on ways to take back control over my work day and, more importantly, the creative process. Email is the quintessential “death of a thousand cuts” because all of the reasons to check it are excusable. It is, after all, productive. But it’s also a diversion. We talk to friends and family through it. We use it as a to-do list; leaving Emails in our Inbox as a reminder to get something done. These things are valid reasons to check Email throughout the day, but together they create a monster of distraction and overwhelmedness. A monster we embrace, because it is often easier than the task at hand. Email is the perfect diversion from our top priority because it is acceptable and, often, helpful. But at its worst, it can be an avoidance tool.

The following three things took me a full year to really embrace and do – weening off the drug is hard – but they are actually very simple tasks and can be employed in under 15 minutes. Continue reading ‘Email Rehab. My personal journey out of hell.’