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A couple of months ago, I wrote a short post in my personal blog entitled You Choose How People Interact with You.  In this post, I cover a process that will train the people around you to respect your time and honor your requests.   

Stage One - HEALTHY

• Honor - Benefit of Choice
• "Can you do this for me please ________ by this time on this day?"

Stage Two - WE MIGHT HAVE AN ISSUE

• Lost Honor - No longer a request, it is now an expectation
• "Produce the result or give me an explanation of why the task wasn't completed"

Stage Three - THIS IS THE ISSUE

• Face-to-Face - And you don't want to have more than a couple of step three face-to-face conversations with me
• "This is the issue - what is your take on it? - and this is what needs to happen for us to move forward" 

This process is easy to implement, and it will lead to healthier and more productive relationships.

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Study after study has shown that larger monitors and multi-monitor displays increase productivity, especially when doing complex, cognitively loaded tasks.  Research also indicates that large displays can reduce stress.  To learn more, read Big Monitors Improve Productivity: The Facts.

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A fast and reliable laptop is a major component to success w/ almost any business nowadays.   I am a big fan of Lenovo laptops.  I own the R61; it's got a 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 3GB of RAM, and a pretty good graphics card.  The fast processor let's me run several applications at once without any lag.  I can even work on my computer while video renders in the background.  Today, I needed to buy a new computer for our colleague.  He has been working off an old computer and it's definitely hammering his productivity.  I didn't buy a Lenovo!  I still love their computers, but they, like so many other companies charge an arm-and-a-leg for laptops w/ a Quad Core processor.  I bought this Asus (a pretty good brand if you ask me) for $1,100 on Amazon; pretty much the same laptop costs just over $2,500 at BestBuy.  In fact, the specs for the Asus through Amazon are better.  The hard-drive is 7200rpm's.

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My copy of the new Four Hour Workweek just arrived.  I like the first book, but didn't really connect w/ the message b/c of the presentation style.  Recently, I started to read Tim Ferriss' blog and connected w/ the sincerity and passion behind his message.  Now I am a loyal and avid follower of his teachings. 

I am keen to start reading his new book, which I will do later today.

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The Goal - Reduce Email Haze When Using Gmail
I need to automatically segment non-critical emails (e.g. notifications, newsletters, etc.), but the "multiple inboxes" Gmail labs feature confuses me.

The Solution
Use Gmail filters, creatively!  Create a filter in Gmail that will auto-archive and place the types of email I wish to filter into labels.  Now they will not clutter my inbox and distract me, but I will still be able to see the unread count to detect spikes in relation to each label, and so I can spot channel partners that I have been in discussions w/ signing up.  Once I read the emails within the label, I then remove the label [this is key].  In this way, I have created multiple inboxes.  The only downside is that labels do not show in mobile phone email clients.  So, if you mimic this system, only create filters and auto-archive to labels for non-critical emails, if you use or intend to use a mobile phone in conjunction w/ your computer.  In my case, we have a customer support team that address our order notifications, so these emails are non-critical.

The system is:

1. For the emails you wish to segment away from your inbox, create a filter;
2. Auto-archive to an appropriate label;
3. Remove the label upon reading the emails, this puts it in Gmail's regular archive and removes it from your label which you are using as an inbox.

It would be easy to let a system like this get cluttered, so I am going to keep my labels to a minimum.  At present, I have the following labels: Disqus (blog comments); Facebook; Order Notifications; Newsletters. 

Staying focused throughout the day is critical.  By removing non-critical emails from my primary inbox, I am reducing the amount of information I personally need to filter through during the day.  This improves my focus!  Since I am batching non-critical tasks, I am being more efficient.  Plus, in those times when there are not enough hours in the day, I can prioritize easily by not reading Newsletters and Facebook notifications until the weekend.

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