AntSaint

Everyone Loves to Hate a Winner

I'm a long-time enjoyer of Chris Guillebeau's insightful, joy-of-life posts at The Art of Noncomformity. While rereading a favorite post of his, I remembered conversations I've heard over the years, and thought of how much they mirrored what he was saying. Everyone loves someone who's talented, creative – until they go and have the audacity to make a good living at it...

Link: The Art of Nonconformity - Everyone Loves to Hate a Winner.

"Having two coffee shops is OK, but not one on every corner. A European tour is OK, but not Madison Square Garden. Wait a minute– you can pay the rent and health insurance with your art? That is the kind of success that causes people to turn against you."

Email Twice a Day - Progress Report

It's now been a few weeks since beginning to work on cutting down on email checking to twice a day. Here's where things stand...

• The urge to check email is still there, but it has lessened considerably. Sometimes that yellow envelope icon beckons to me — but I resist. And am stronger for it.
• One day I threw caution to the winds, and left email up. It was distracting, and won't be done again.
• The biggest trap I fall into is when there is something I'm waiting for an email about — so I check constantly. This is understandable, but counter-productive. It's starting to change too though, and I'm getting better at letting that sense of urgency pass. It's still just email, for heaven's sake.
• If someone emails me about, say, a blog post, I'm trying to be better about firing off just a quick reply when I receive the initial email. Just a "wanted to let you know I got your email and I'll need some time to look into this" sort of thing. In addition to just being more courteous, since the sender knows their email hasn't vanished into the digital void, I also feel I'm being more responsive and am actually getting email and blogging tasks done in a more timely fashion.
• Labels rock. Google, whoever came up with labels for Gmail, I owe them a beverage. That's a separate post.

Email progress is very much improving. I predict that by the end of October, I'll have my urge to check email under control, will be responding to emails faster, and handing tasks better.

See Also

• Email Twice a Day - Progress Report - October 01, 2008
• Email Twice a Day - Progress Report - September 16, 2008
• The Joy of Time Away  - September 10, 2008

Email Twice a Day - Progress Report

Cutting down email... cutting down email... the work, and the progress, continues.

Last week I noted some relapses into checking email too many times a day. This past week was much better, and I only checked email twice a day, except for one day where I checked it 3 times. The restraint still takes some mental effort, but it is becoming more and more natural to me now – email is not urgent... it does not need to be checked often... it is okay not to reply immediately...

Here are some of the things learned and implemented over the last to help manage email:

• Reduce inbox clutter. This has been going much better. Message are being dealt with, replied to, noted for later action and, above all – moved out of the inbox.
• Set up "Tasks" label in Gmail. Just did this today. I had some emails that I'm not going to get to immediately, so I set up a new "Tasks" label that I can use to help me manage these.
• Work email and personal email should follow the same strategy. I've been using the same techniques for both personal and work email, and the double reinforcement is paying off. It's easier to prioritize tasks, empty the inbox, and know when to shut down the email and tuck into something else

Good progress this week, but above all the less-checking of email is getting more and more natural. Now to see how this week goes.

Email Twice a Day - Progress Report

Last week I mentioned I was working on cutting down on how often I look at my email. Note that's not how often I reply to email, how often I deal with email, etc. – just how often I pull up my inbox and check. My initial goal is to cut that down from far too bloody often to no more than twice a day.

So far it's going pretty well. I did relapse today, however, and checked email 3 times. I'm getting better at ignoring my notifier, however, which is a good step. I still prefer having the notifier there, as it helps me decide when I'm going to check email.

What is nice about deliberately cutting down how often I check email, is that it forces me to be more proactive when I do check email. When I get messages, I'm getting better at dealing with them on the spot, instead of letting them sit in my inbox and grow moldy.

Now to continue ignoring the inbox.

10 Ways to Gracefully Turn Down Some "Difficult" Client Requests

There's no scope creep like web development scope creep. The trouble with doing a web project, is the perception that because it's a website, any change can be done easily and quickly. Not necessarily, and especially when requests start getting beyond the agree scope of the project. Luckily, here are some handy tips on gracefully dealing with difficult requests from clients, that help everyone stay civil, involved, engaged - and to spec.

Link: ideasonideas - Eric Karjaluoto discusses design, brands and experience � Blog Archive � How to disarm 10 difficult client observations/requests.

"Unveiling a solution is arguably the most harrowing aspect of the creative process. In our last post we talked about how we can work to better service our clients. In this one, I’ll share some of the best responses we have to questions that can often derail an otherwise effective solution."

Digital Copyright Slider Tool

Great find on Lifehacker today. This Copyright "slider tool" gives you different dates and parameters for content, and the slider helps you determine the content's copyright status:

Link: PDTool.

Via Copyright: Digital Sliderule Makes Copyright Law Dead Simple

Video Poll Results for Email Marketing

Polls like this are good because they remind email marketers what not to do. Want to put a form in your email? Go for it... just don't expect it to work. Same with video. And that really cool javascript thing you got coded up. Don't put that stuff in email, it just doesn't work consistently. Put it on your website, and have the email get people to go there:

Link: EmailKarma.net: Video Poll Results.

"The results are in... with a limited number of respondents I'm not sure how scientific this is, but the results did show a number of very strong trends"

Email Marketing Blogs

These 14 blogs are at the least must-check-outs, but you'll find many are must-subscribes. These have been very handy of late, when keeping up with the email marketing industry, as well as exploring new ideas for marketing messages and campaigns:

Link: Larry Chase's Search Engine for Marketers - Best Email Marketing Blogs Resource Center.

How to Make Accurate Time Estimates

When it comes to estimating projects, I am always far too optimistic. Too trusting of efficient skills and fact-finding, and always a little too forgetful of inevitable hiccups, problems, and stuff that comes up along the way. Reading Steve Pavlina's post was quite the eye-opener. The solution is so simple, really — just figure out your own personal "fudge factor", say 1.5 in Steve's case, and multiple your time estimate by that number. If I'm not careful, I'm going to start coming up with accurate estimates now...

Link: How to Make Accurate Time Estimates.

"My average fudge ratio is about 1.5. This means that whenever I make an off-the-cuff estimate for how long a task will take, on average I’m too optimistic; the task ends up taking about 50% longer than my initial guess."

Favorite Online Marketing Quotes

Online marketing, like any other field, churns out its share of aphorisms and quips. This is a great collection of things that will bring out a big grin on inner online marketing geek (thanks JP for sending it along!):

Link: Favorite Online Marketing Quotes.

My favorite: “Being #1 on MSN is like being Valedictorian of summer school.” — Craig McDonald