Email is one of the most useful and time-wasting things you can do online. How many of us leave our email open all day? Do we really need to do that? I think not. Here are some tips for managing your email without it taking over your life.

Set a time for checking your email.

Checking your email a few times a day isn’t a bad idea, it’s when you check it constantly that you’re in trouble.

Instead of leaving it open, set some times when you know you’ll be able to deal with any new messages. First thing in the morning, before or after lunch, and before you finish for the day are times that work best for me. Find the times that work for you, and stick to them.

Don’t reply immediately.

This is a point I’m going to have trouble with - I’ve always liked to be able to reply quickly if I have the answers there and then.

But there are problems with this approach. Firstly, it can tie you to your email far too closely, meaning that people will start to expect a very fast reply - even if they contact you when it’s the middle of the night for you - and even if you’re working on something else.

Secondly, replying too quickly can cause confusion if the sender realises they forgot to mention something, perhaps a missed attachment or a quick comment to say “actually, don’t worry, I’ve figured it out”. Replying immediately would mean you reply to the original email before you received the follow-up.

Set a standard response time.

While I don’t think you should respond immediately, it’s a very bad idea to ignore emails or take forever to reply. Decide on a reasonable response time, and stick to it. e.g. within 3-5 working days.

if you have a contact form on your website (and you should), it’s OK to give a rough idea of your response times, but mention that they can change depending on complexity.

Consider alternatives for longer discussions.

I used to work with some people who insisted that email should be a last resort, and we should always aim to start with face-to-face conversations or a phone call.

For short queries, or queries of a technical nature, I don’t agree with this at all. I think it’s a lot better to send an email to get the details across. If it’s not a quick reply it could be discussed outside of an email.

If an email starts to go back and forth more than a few times, you may find it easier to try an alternative method of communication.

Keep your inbox tidy.

I know people who keep everything in their inbox - thousands upon thousands of emails. To me, it seems like sheer laziness to not sort things properly, but it actually goes further than that. If you keep every email you receive and you don’t sort anything, it’s going to get harder and harder to find emails in future.

Ask yourself - do you really need to keep all of those emails? Delete anything you don’t need, file everything you do need, and remove all emails from your inbox when you have dealt with them.

Those are my tips - how do you manage your email?

Your day is comprised of exactly 24 hours. If you spend even a fraction of those hours online you might surf numerous websites, check your email a dozen times, chat to a friend on yahoo, watch a movie, listen to music, work on a project, write a document, etc. How much of the time you are at your computer is productive? Where does that time go?

Once installed, Rescue Time sits quietly in the notification area of your task bar, stealthy as a ninja, watching and recording your computer usage. You can forget it is there except those times when you are analyzing your results. It will continue to do its job, as you continue to do yours.

1. Constant computer usage tracking

Pro: Rescue Time knows what you’re working on. It tracks the time you spend on various Applications and Websites. See which programs you use most frequently. Examine which projects consume most of your time. This information can help you increase your productivity and reduce time spent on unnecessary tasks.

Con: The most serious limitation to Rescue Time is that it can only track the time I’m at the computer. When will they invent a device that tracks how much time I spend doing chores, spending time with the family, or sleeping?

2. Depth of information

Pro: You can see the time you’ve been at the keys with detailed records of your usage by day, week, month, year, and all time. Each application is listed with a breakdown of not only how much time you’ve put into that project but exactly which hours of the day were involved.

Con: The information provided by Rescue Time is a little shallow. It’s excellent for telling me which websites or applications I’ve been using but not what I’ve been viewing on them. The tool would be even more useful if it showed specific page information inside domain names, file names inside applications, and contact names on messenger and email services.

3. Tag activities with your keywords

Pro: You can tag each of your applications and websites with the keywords of your choice. Is a particular website a part of a specific project? Tag it! Do you have a few favorite games? They can be group with a single ‘games’ tag. Tag your usage to your own liking.

Con: The lack of depth prevents these tags from reaching their full potential. For example, if you’ve spent time in Microsoft Word some of it might have been business related, other personal, without additional depth there is no way to tag the difference.

4. Goals, alarms & alerts!

Pro: With the handy Goals aspect you can set specific time expectations or limits on your activities. Have your Rescue Time Goals sent via RSS, Email, or SMS so you can see exactly how you’re progressing with your goals.

Con: If they’ll send alerts via RSS, Email, and SMS why can’t they simply have Rescue Time give us a pop up alert box direct to our screen?

5. Clever widgets & developing API

Pro: Rescue Time Widgets allow you to access and share your details from your desktop or blog. They are also currently developing an API to allow developers to create new applications and widgets for greater diversity. This creates a fantastic opportunity to grow and develop based on what users truly want in an application like this.

Con: One thing Rescue Time does not have a Windows Vista sidebar widget. I’d like to be able to see my stats from my desktop rather than logging into the website and the current web-dependency reduces the usefulness of Rescue Time as a time management tool. Storing data online has become a common and preferred means but Rescue Time would truly benefit from an ability to have offline access to the same information.

Rescue Time is a fantastic time management tool. Used effectively it can increase productivity, reduce ineffective work habits, and tantalize statistic lovers. Discover exactly how you user your computer time, track the websites you frequent, evaluate the value of your software, and maximize your efficiency.

Rebecca Laffar-Smith is a freelance writer, editor, and web tech. Her blog, The Writer’s Round-About discusses various aspects of online freelance business. Subscribe to The Writer’s Round-About via RSS or email!

Do you plan your days carefully, or just do work as it comes in?

Doing things as they come in is a risky approach to work. While smaller tasks may be completed quickly, big projects will keep getting pushed to one side. The same applies to ignoring larger tasks in favour of the “easy” work, or the things you want to do.

Instead of feeling the need to take action as soon as a new job comes in, add the task to your to-do list and continue with whatever you were working on previously. With emails, let them sit in your inbox for a bit - don’t jump into your email straight away.

Every day, set aside some time to review your outstanding work. This needs to be a time when you will not be interrupted. Don’t go thinking you should be “on call” 24/7 if your job doesn’t actually require it. Divert your phone to voicemail, or turn it off. Close your email and instant messengers. Then start getting organised.

Use a proper organisational tool. Todoist is a simple but effective way to manage multiple workstreams. You can use dates, priorities and sub-projects to organise the things you need to do. If you don’t want to use Todoist (and I’d recommend that you at least try it out), find another tool that’s more structured than a sheet of paper or a Word document. I’ve tried both methods. Todoist is far better than a top-to-bottom list.

Reorder your tasks so they appear in a logical sequence. Give them dates so you can tell whether you’re on schedule or not. If you get ahead of schedule, reorganise the remaining tasks so they reflect the new dates. Reorganise if you get behind, too. This really helps you to stay on top of your workload.

Don’t get over-ambitious. Write everything down, but prioritise what you know you’ll be able to do on the days when you know you’ll be able to work. Keep it realistic, be ambitious if you can, but don’t go overboard.

Keep an eye on tasks that get out of control. What’s causing the delay? How will you know when they are completed? Could you break them down to stand a better chance of completing them? Ensure you communicate with your customers about any tasks that may overrun.

Set aside time to DO THE WORK! It’s all very well doing all this planning, and some days you may be very busy, but don’t say “I’m going to do this today” and then get caught up with phone calls and emails. There’s no excuse. Customers will get tired of your excuses if you keep putting things off until “tomorrow”. Tomorrow never comes.

Review and improve. Are you any good at estimating your timescales? Are you getting things done? Monitor your progress and consider whether you could be doing better. Continuous improvement is a vital part of working.

How do you manage your working schedule?

Can you avoid unnecessary meetings?

How many times have you attended a meeting that didn’t seem to serve a purpose? A meeting where you didn’t need to be there? Or a meeting that was badly organised and just went on forever?

I’ve been to a few like that. Avoid wasting your time. Here are some ways to maximise the value of meetings.

Ask if you need to be there.

Do this in advance of the meeting. Why have you been invited? What will you be able to contribute? Is it essential that you attend the meeting or could you simply provide information in an email?

Some people may go on about encouraging face to face or at least verbal communication as opposed to email. But for very detailed information, especially technical documents, it can be a lot easier to provide the information in an email.

Get an agenda.

Every meeting should have an agenda. If not, there’s a risk that it will meander and take much longer than it needs to. An agenda is good because it clearly shows the subjects that will be discussed, and with timescales the chairperson can ensure that discussions stick to the schedule.

Prepare in advance.

Sometimes you won’t know exactly what will be said until the meeting starts. But it helps to have some idea. If you can prepare, the meeting will be that much easier. Otherwise, you’ll just end up saying “I’ll have to get back to you on that,” and half of the discussions become follow-up actions. By then, perhaps a meeting wasn’t even needed.

Bring a pen and some paper.

Always expect to write something down. It’s better to bring a pen and some paper and not write anything, than not bring them and wish you had.

Don’t overdo it.

Some people think it’s best to say something so you don’t appear to be “dead wood”. This is all very well if you have something to say, but saying something that doesn’t need to be said can be far more damaging than keeping quiet. Talking too much, especially if the discussion goes way off-topic, can be a very bad idea as it can make a meeting go on for a lot longer than it needs to. Stick to the subject at hand where possible.

Review your progress.

After the meeting, look back and see if you really did need to be involved, and whether the discussion could have been handled any differently. Give feedback to the chairperson if you have any suggestions for improving future meetings of a similar nature.

Those are my suggestions - do you have any tips for maximising the value of meetings? Can you remember your best and worst meetings? What made them so extreme?

Is this how you feel when you leave work, or do you take the stress with you?

Stress is not uncommon in a job, but failing to deal with it effectively can have a serious impact on your life.

I recently quit my position as an administrator for Entrecard, citing stress as the main reason. It was an unpaid role and I volunteered many hours of my time to deal with support queries. However, it was a highly busy job and some of the queries were extremely difficult to deal with.

At the start, I found myself helping out in a number of areas. I frequently offered to take on more work and did everything I could to make a difference. People appreciated the help. All was good.

However, as time progressed, I realised that other things were not getting done. Writing music, coding Injader, updating my blogs, these were all things that I enjoyed doing and somehow I just wasn’t finding the time to do them. Then I noticed that the Entrecard position was getting harder to do.

Between my day job and my volunteer work for Entrecard, I had very little time for anything else. Before, I would work on my own projects from time to time, which helped me to de-stress. At the time I didn’t realise that this was my way of de-stressing. It was only when I didn’t have time for my own projects anymore that things started to go bad.

Without warning, things suddenly got very tough for me. I was massively stressed out, unhappy, and I was making mistakes. The stress levels were simply too much for me to deal with, I lost focus of my goals, and a lot of things ground to a halt. This blog was one of those things, my music was another.

I knew that something had to give. So, I resigned my position at Entrecard, refocused my blogging priorities, and set up a new blog - Top Ten Blog Tips. I finally closed the doors on my blog at benbarden.com, and started to get my life back.

There are a few things I have learned from this experience.

1. Your life should have a realistic balance between work goals and personal goals. Not everyone enjoys their job, but even if you enjoy every minute of it, don’t overdo it. Otherwise, it’ll soon lose its shine.
2. You can’t de-stress if you take on too much. Watch out for the warning signs and consider making some changes if your life hits a serious downturn. Make time for your own activities no matter how demanding your work needs may be.
3. If things get to be too much, resist the urge to make a rash decision to get a “quick fix”. It may give you some relief, but it may not be the best way to approach the situation and it’s far more disruptive if you have to make two changes in quick succession than just the one. Wait until you can review the situation with a clear head, and make a decision then.

Sometimes we only seem to learn from our mistakes, but don’t ignore the warning signs. Thankfully, I did take action fairly early on. The main thing to remember is that you need to maintain a sensible balance to ensure things don’t get out of control.

That’s my view - how do you de-stress?

Do you know where you're headed before you set off?

It’s all too easy to dive into your work head first without doing any kind of planning.

But if you don’t establish a direction before you start, how will you know where to go, how to get there, and what to look out for along the way? More to the point, will you ever get to where you want to be, and will you even know whether you’re done or not?

Using a five-step approach

The Organised Approach to Websites includes some vital ways to get organised with your blog or website. This approach can be modified for almost anything. Here’s how the five-step approach looks for Zen Working.

1. Identify the task.

What are you going to do? It’s important to write a clear objective, otherwise you won’t have a goal that you can work to without significant difficulties. For now, just get the basic task written down. The detail gets added next.

2. Plan and research.

How will you get the job done? For starters, larger projects will need to be broken down into multiple objectives. If you were going to write a new blogging system, for instance, a bad objective would be “Develop a new blogging system”. You’ll get sick of not being able to tick the item off your list, and it will just not get done. Having a list of tasks that need to be done is vital before you go any further. Establish a clear sequence of events, identify dependencies, and add in some milestones.

3. Do the job.

For a development project, this means writing the code. It’s quite likely you’ll add in some extra layers of detail prior to commencing this stage. The main thing to be careful about is not to code until you know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how you’re doing it. If you broke the task down into clear objectives, the code should be all the easier to write.

4. Quality control.

Test, test, test. Don’t do all the work then review it at the end. Test as you go. With software, this doesn’t mean “check it works”. It means break it, then fix it. You want to find all the bugs at this stage, not later on. Code, test, re-code, re-test, and so on. And get someone else to help with the testing.

5. Implement and review.

Just because the task is complete, doesn’t mean your job is done. Post-project support and keeping in contact with the customer is really important. Keep an eye out for any new issues, and fix them. Ask for new requirements so you can build on what you’ve already put together. Ask for feedback on how the project went. Document your findings and decide if there’s anything you would do differently in future. There’s always something new to learn, something to improve on, and another job to do. Ensure you establish a routine of continuous improvement.

Anyway, that’s enough from me - do you know where you’re headed before you set off? Do you keep improving your methods?

Mind maps can help to break down large projects into manageable chunks.

Managing your workload with online tools or a great to-do list is fine for smaller jobs, but what about big projects? Here are 5 tools and concepts that you should consider when managing a large project.

Mind maps

A mind map is a diagram that starts with one word or phrase at the centre, with various thoughts and ideas spreading outwards. The further out you go, the greater the detail becomes.

Mind mapping is a great way to get all of your thoughts down on paper without trying to do it in a conventional list. You can organise your thoughts into a list later, but if you start with a top-to-bottom list you may run out of room. Mind maps are better for using all of the available space, and are much easier on the eye mostly due to the use of colours.

Project scope

Some projects may be susceptible to “out of scope” requirements being included just to get them done. Establish clear goals for the project and consider small changes, but stay within the project scope: that is, evaluate whether the changes submitted will meet the project objectives. Surplus changes can be considered if you run ahead of schedule, but are not the highest priority and should not detract from the critical path.

Dependencies and the critical path

Once you’ve got your tasks written down, it helps immensely if you can organise each task to indicate any dependencies on other tasks. For instance, you might want to create a design on paper before trying to code it, and you might want to think of a solid niche for a blog before planning your first posts.

Some projects have far more critical dependencies than others. For instance, if you’re a property developer and you’re building a house from the ground up (literally), you can’t build until you have a solid plan, and you can’t put the roof on first. It may seem obvious, but if you’re project managing a team of builders, you’ve got to understand the dependencies so you can tell them what to do when.

The “critical path” refers to the tasks that must be completed for the project to meet its objectives. Note that if you have 5 tasks to complete but each of them has a dependency, the dependencies become part of the critical path too.

Milestones

A milestone can be used as a kind of checkpoint to indicate when a specific workstream has completed. Assigning a date to a milestone means you have a goal to work towards. Big projects usually have several milestones, which poses less of a risk than having one milestone for the whole project. That way, if a milestone slips, you can adjust the subsequent milestones accordingly. This means you have a much clearer idea of when the project will conclude.

Milestones can break up inter-project dependencies. For instance, in software development projects there can be milestones to indicate the start or end of requirements gathering, design, development, system testing, user acceptance testing and implementation. There is often some overlap between the tasks, and there may be dependencies that span milestones, but milestones can still be used to highlight that non-urgent changes will not be accepted beyond a certain date. This is important to avoid late changes throwing the project timescales out.

Stage reviews

A vital part of running a large project is reviewing progress along the way, not just at the end of the project. If certain tasks are not going according to plan, they need to be addressed before those tasks start impacting on the other tasks. Early identification and resolution of problem areas is an extremely important part of getting your projects completed on time.

What other tips do you have for managing a large project?

Combining several lists into one.

Whether it’s work for my day job, my three blogs, Injader, or Entrecard, it’s all in the list. I can use projects and sub-projects to split up the work. This is far better than my previous mess of Word documents, text files and notepaper.

I have even used Todoist to replace Eventum, an issue tracking package that I had started to use for Injader. It was taking so long to get everything into the system that I stopped doing it. On Sunday night, I sat down for a couple of hours, typed all of the remaining changes for Injader from my paperwork, and copied everything across from Eventum.

This is a massive benefit to me. Now I can keep track of everything, no matter which computer I’m on, or which project I’m tackling.

Breaking down large projects.

I’m going to look at this in a future post, but for now, I’ll just say that Todoist is starting to help me get stuck into larger projects with greater confidence. This is an unexpected bonus and something I’ve struggled with in the past. Previously, I’d get the projects done, but not without significant hassle and stress.

Scheduling your life.

I wouldn’t consider Todoist as a “lifestyle tool”, but when so much of my life involves working, it’s extremely important to manage my workload and keep on top of all the new and existing changes I’ve got to do.

Even when you have your fingers in as many pies as I do (and yes, I do like pie), Todoist allows you to see what needs doing on any given day or within the next few days across all that you do. This allows you to stay focused, stay motivated, and stay in control of your work.

Tools are important.

Using tools are an important part of our working lives. If you work from home - especially if you work for a small company, or you’re self-employed - you may need to find and evaluate your own tools. Todoist is a perfect starting point for anyone who needs to keep track of several different streams of work at once, or even just several to-do items on a single job. It’s highly effective, and is a recommended tool for Zen Workers.

• Give Todoist a try.

Todoist: much todo about nothing?

Thanks to fragileheart for suggesting this tool.

I’m a very organised person, but right now, my to-do lists are a complete mess. The list for my day job uses my tips for writing a great to-do list, but my other lists are all over the place. I have an online issue tracker for Injader changes, along with bits of paper, emails, text files, Word documents, the list goes on and on. Far too many things that I just keep losing track of.

To restore some order, I’ve decided to give Todoist a whirl. It’s a free tool that allows you to manage your work effectively. First you register and sign in, then you start adding projects. These are used for organising your tasks. Key features include: sub-projects, priorities, due dates, task schedule, task search, plus a few other things I probably haven’t found yet.

Some things I already like (bear in mind this is only after 30 minutes of use):

1. Adding projects, sub-projects and tasks is really quick and easy.
2. Shortcuts for setting event dates - such as “tomorrow”, or “next tue” - very handy indeed.
3. Collapsing projects is handy for when I don’t want to show you my private work
4. It’s a small thing, but I like the numbers that show me how many tasks I’ve got in a project, and I also like the way they add up when you collapse a project.
5. There’s optional Gmail / Firefox integration. Haven’t used it yet but it’s good to have!

Some things I would like to see:

1. Some better colours would be nice, or more of them. This is also a problem with labels in Gmail. Let me use a proper colour picker, and I’ll be much happier!
2. Better use of priorities, as right now they aren’t useful enough. I can view ALL priority 1 items, but not all priority 1 items in a specific project, and when viewing a project I can’t sort the items by priority. With Injader, dates aren’t really relevant, it’s all about the priorities.
3. I’d like to be able to drag an item to the left or the right as well as up and down. Reordering projects is handy, as is the way you can make a sub-project by indenting it, but it’s quite tricky if you want to do both.
4. Not so much a request, more of a small annoyance. Some of the shortcuts are weird and override standard functions. e.g. I often use CTRL + cursor left or right to jump between words. When adding a task or a project, I can’t do this because the same key combination is used to indent or outdent items.
5. The “add above” / “add below” terminology is confusing. Adding a project above or below the current item puts it at the same level, which kind of makes sense, except I thought it would actually make it a sub-project - so it appears at the level below the current item. An option to add a sub-project beneath the current project would help instead of having to add then indent it.

Overall, I think Todoist is a really handy application, and I’m going to try using it to see if it’s a suitable replacement for my existing methods.

Have you tried Todoist? What do you like about it? What would you change?

Before you kickstart your week, stop and take stock.

Every Monday at Zen Working, we’ll be looking at kickstarting your week. But before you can really kickstart your week, you need to stop - and review your techniques.

Was last week a good week or a bad week? What caused this? What would allow you to have a good week, and how can you avoid a bad week?

For instance, this time last week I posted 10 steps for writing a great to-do list. But there’s a lot more to Zen Working than reading about it. You actually have to do it. That’s why the first thing I did this morning was to revamp my old to-do list. I used a table instead of a straightforward list of items, moved the three main projects into their own table cells with headers, and put the rest under a Miscellaneous box.

Last week, I got ambitious with some big ideas, and that’s why I suggested doing a little dreaming on a Friday. Today, my wife and I took the weekend relaxation post and applied it to a Monday evening. We walked the dog and went shopping.

This week, I’d like to try and make Wednesday an email-free day, but instead of having another Ambitious Friday, I’d like to try and get some things finished by the end of the week. Perhaps next week I’ll try and address my long-standing difficulties with getting up in the morning - or maybe I’ll try and do it sooner.

In fact, I’ve already followed my own advice by writing this post - stopping to review the tips I’ve posted so far, looking at how many of them are already in place, and what I still need to work on.

So now it’s your turn. Have you applied any of these tips to your working life yet? What are you going to change this week?