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129 lines
4.9 KiB
ReStructuredText
129 lines
4.9 KiB
ReStructuredText
An attempt to handle mails better
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#################################
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:date: 01/03/2013
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:status: draft
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Those of you who wrote me emails know it, I'm really bad at handling them. This
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is because I don't have any flow in place. Recently, I surprised myself
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not even reading all these emails. And this means frustration for me and for
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the people who expect me to read them.
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So here is an attempt to solve this.
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When I first gave some thoughts to this, I directly thought about "how to
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automatically improve my inbox", or "how to let the machine do the work rather
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than myself.
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When reading emails, you then need to take actions. Some can be automated
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/ short, some cannot.
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Tooling
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=======
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I currently have a folder for each "project" I'm involved in. This means
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a lot of projects, and a lot of folders. For instance, when I get a mail from
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`marketplace-devs@mozilla.org`, it goes to the `marketplace` folder.
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Let's try to list from where I receive emails and what I should do with
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them.
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- low-involvement mailling-lists
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- high-involvement mailing-lists
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- work-related bugmails
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- non-work-related bugmails
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- personal mails
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- work-related mails
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Low-involvement mailing-lists
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-----------------------------
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These are probably the easiest to get rid of. I subscribed to a bunch of
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technical discussion groups, for instance django-dev, pyramid-dev, catalog-sig,
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distutils-sig, python-dev and others.
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Since you can find most of these public mailing-lists online, my last move was
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to just unsubscribe from them, telling myself I'll read them there.
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Obviously, this isn't true because I never read them online until someone
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points me to an interesting discussion there, but it seems that the really
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interesting topics pops up on twitter / IRC from time to time, and the spare
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time it creates is really worth some good information less.
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High-involvement mailing-list
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-----------------------------
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In this category, I put the mailing lists you have to read, think once, think
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again and answer. Answering to emails isn't always something I do
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straight-away. Sometimes I'm not good-enough technically to answer really
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quickly, and it needs some research from me. Sometimes it just needs some time
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for my brain to pick everything up before answering.
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I currently keep these emails "unread" in their folder, and try to get back to
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it later. Which I usually don't do. And everything ends up in limbo.
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I actually created a second mailbox for myself where I send all the tasks
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I need to take time to do. That's a TODO list, but I can actually send it
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emails.
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Every day, I try to find some time to take one of these tasks and have an
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answer for these mails. So far it's working well, but I'm wondering what will
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happen if I get too much mails in there.
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Bug mails (work or non-work related)
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------------------------------------
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I read them on the fly and see if I have something to do with them. Most of the
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time I don't and so I delete them. When I do, I assign myself a task in GTG to
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deal with later.
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I work for Mozilla only 4 days per week. The goal is to have some time during
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the extra day to take care of the others projects I'm involved with.
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Usually I manage to do what I need to do during this 5th day. If I do and
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things stack up, the first thing I do is to make the people that are / would be
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waiting on me aware of the situation. This usually solves the problem.
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Directed mails
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--------------
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Once I've setup the rules I described, the remaining mails I receive are
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directed personal mails. Hopefully, for me that means not too much mails, and
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I'm able to answer them in an acceptable time-frame. I usually try to answer
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them straight ahead if I can, also, or convert the ones that ask me for
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something special into a GTG task.
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Discipline
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==========
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That would be foolish to think everything only takes tools. It also takes some
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discipline.
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I'm trying something: I'm spending a little 30mn to an hour reading mails in
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the morning, eventually answering if the answer is short; plus another hour in
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the afternoon to answer to the longer mails that would had need some more
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thinking for me.
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Pelican
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=======
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I receive a lot of mails about pelican, and to be honnest I don't read most of
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them by now because I know it means I'll have to read text, code, and
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eventually make comments on these.
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And whenever I read these mails, I usually don't have time to handle them right
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away. Most of these mails come from github pull requests. This means I got
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a mail each time someone open, comment or close on a bug or issue.
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Okay, so what do I do with that? Currently, these mails end-up in a "folder" on
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my email, so they don't languish on my inbox, which is a first good step, but
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I would need
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Mozilla
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=======
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At mozilla, most of the interesting emails are discussions, but I currently
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don't separate the bugmails from the other emails, so in the same box, without
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a lot of distinction I receive all the discussions for the different lists I'm
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on, and for the code review / issues that are done on either bugzilla or
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github.
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