Posted by (10) Comment
I just FAIL at the Inbox Zero concept and related methods for taming the email beast. I know this so well that I’ve never really *tried* hard to get there. A few half-hearted, high-energy assaults on my inbox, adoption of some of the main principles, yes, but never achieved. And the progress I *do* make I never manage to preserve.
The truth is, a LOT of my email just serves as little flags of information that I can take in at a glance with no need to act on. The time it takes to find and delete all of these little flags, if I bothered, would be wasted. It’s enough to have them register in my brain via gmail or blackberry and then flow away in the stream that is my inbox.
What I *really* need isn’t inbox zero, it’s inbox infinity.
Inbox Infinity
I want my optimized inbox to automatically delete all messages on a rolling time frame, x weeks or days after receipt. With that as the default, I would set up rules for certain messages to auto-archive instead of delete. The bulk of messages received fall into the first or second treatment.
Everything else can then be batch processed using an “Inbox Zero” like system, where I respond, convert the message to a task, add an event to my calendar or tag and archive information I will need for later reference.
This in place, I’d only have to give mind and click-share to the messages I need to act on. The rest would just play their parts as messengers and beacons and then drift away on the river without my intervention. It’s a subtle difference, and might not sound like a big time-saver to many of you, but deleting and archiving by hand is actually a substantial (and worthless) part of my inbox maintenance.
What do you think? Are there hackarounds in Gmail that would let me do this?
Posted by (1) Comment
While some accomplished speakers find it sexy to dis Toastmasters, I am finding more and more to love about the group and its doctrines, even when they rub me the wrong way. I think some of the core rules and values are almost beautiful in their mercy and kindness towards the frightened speaking learner/learning speaker. But I digress.
Toastmasters doesn’t just teach speaking. They teach listening too. This is crucial. Give me the most talented speaker in the world, if they cannot listen to my information about who they’ll be addressing they’ll almost surely crash. You just can’t speak well if you refuse to listen well.
Marketing communications, I have always taught, is as much about taking in information as it is putting information out there. In any medium. To be a good speaker, come to understand what the audience will respond to by asking questions and listening for the answers.
This is very active listening, not just taking in what you happen to hear, but making a point of seeking out answers, absorbing them, and taking them seriously enough to be able to speak with impact.
Posted by (1) Comment
3 Vs Disease, or, poor ol’ Albert Mehrabian
Anyone ever try to tell you what you actually say only supplies 7% of your credibility? Please tell me somewhere inside your skull someone jumped up and yelled “bullsh*t” when you heard that.
Mehrabian broke communications down into what we popularly call “3 Vs”: Verbal, Vocal & Visual. His research assigned 7% importance to the verbal (what you say), 38% to the Vocal (tone, or how you say it) and 55% to the Visual (facial expression, body language).
The research pertains ONLY to communication of emotions (feelings and attitudes) and situations where you are projecting “mixed messages” (face of misery, words of glee). In his words:
Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable.
I still talk about the 3Vs, explained properly, for two reasons:
Posted by (0) Comment
Over steaks in Philly years ago, Frank Maguire gave me this three-part definition of “communication”. I invoke it in nearly every engagement:
Communication = message sent, message received, message acted upon
We’re all geniuses at “message sent” — advertising, brochures, endless talking — it’s all literally a “broadcast” model of communications. Erect the tower, transmit the signal and send send send. And at the same time, if a tree falls in the woods, and nobody hears it…
You’re confidently hitting “message received” most of the time? Good for you, you’re measuring, paying attention, ensuring that the message reaches its destination. While you speak you also should absorb whether you are getting across. Stop, look, listen, just be sure you create a two-way street with the audience, however subtle or overt.
The true destination, though, is “message acted upon.” Speaking and presenting is a results game. WHY are you speaking? WHAT do you need to achieve? Results, objectives, outcomes, goals are all the provenance of audience response. WHO do you need to affect, and most explicitly HOW do you need them to react?
Do you speak well? Good. Are you consistently heard? Better. Do you accomplish your objectives whenever you speak? Hurrah, email me to become a contributor to this blog
If you think “objective” doesn’t apply to your presentation, you’re wrong. Objectives can be subtle, unexpected and indirect. They can be improvised, ad-hoc and changing on the fly. But ultimately, there’s a REASON why you are up there (even if that reason is appease the audience until the main show can begin). You need to always focus on that reason.
Pretty easy back when that song was released, but what about now? Raise your hands if you’ve ever accidentally or hastily sent an email you never should have sent. Some ways to avoid this:
UPDATES: Similar advice quoted on Web Worker Daily 4/24/2007
Posted by (0) Comment
3 Vs Disease, or, poor ol’ Albert Mehrabian
Anyone ever try to tell you what you actually say only supplies 7% of your credibility? Please tell me somewhere inside your skull someone jumped up and yelled “bullsh*t” when you heard that.
Mehrabian broke communications down into what we popularly call “3 Vs”: Verbal, Vocal & Visual. His research assigned 7% importance to the verbal (what you say), 38% to the Vocal (tone, or how you say it) and 55% to the Visual (facial expression, body language).
The research pertains ONLY to communication of emotions (feelings and attitudes) and situations where you are projecting “mixed messages” (face of misery, words of glee). In his words:
Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable.
I still talk about the 3Vs, explained properly, for two reasons:
Pretty easy back when that song was released, but what about now? Raise your hands if you’ve ever accidentally or hastily sent an email you never should have sent. Some ways to avoid this: