Inbox Zero Doesn’t Work — Here’s What I Do

Inbox Zero Doesn’t Work — Here’s What I Do

Years ago I endeavored to hit inbox zero, the zen state where your inbox either stays at zero1 all day long, or at least ends at zero. A decade ago, this was not unreasonable: if you filtered out spam and newsletters you could respond to most emails quickly, even if some of the responses were along the lines of “I need more time to answer this thoroughly.”

And it felt like I accomplished something — all my things were done for the day, nothing outstanding!

Today, most of us are a long way from being able to empty out our inbox at any point in the day. It’s not possible. Too many emails come in as I’m processing email. It also no longer feels like an empowering accomplishment, all I did was file 100 emails and send replies to people that didn’t need to email me in the first place.

I tried a couple of different methods, but still found it impossible to stay on top of it. Around the same time, I started on Getting Things Done (GTD), a framework for collecting and prioritizing your todo list, without going overboard. I didn’t do great there, either.

I found that half-implementing inbox zero and half-implementing GTD meant that I missed important things and then I distrusted my systems — so I went back into my inbox and GTD even more to make sure I didn’t miss something, which I now I was guaranteed to do because there was no one place I was storing things to do. There were in my email, my todo list, my head, sometimes stickies.

Here is the current solution:

  1. I go through all emails — both personal and work — at the end of each day, and clear out all of yesterday’s emails. If today is Thursday, by EOD there will not be any emails remaining from Wednesday. This doesn’t mean I won’t take care of any emails from today, but yesterday’s email must get done.

    This is also possible, because on Thursday I can’t get any more emails from Wednesday. That also means I can finish it! There is a finish line I can see!

    Note: this doesn’t mean I don’t process any of today’s emails, just that I don’t have to.

  2. Emails that need a longer response or an action I can’t take now get put into my GTD Inbox (todo list), but no email is left unturned.

  3. Every morning I go through my GTD inbox (despite the name, this isn’t like email) — this was not an easy habit to start. The real key for me was to give myself permission to not work on that thing today. If it’s important but not urgent, it doesn’t make today’s must do list, which frees up my mental capacity to process the GTD inbox.

When I do all three of these daily I, (1) don’t miss important communications, (2) feel freedom to really end the work day, because I know I didn’t miss any important communications, (3) trust my systems.

So, “inbox zero,” now means “no emails left from yesterday,” which in turns means it is no longer impossible.

  1. Not zero unread, zero messages, full stop. Everything is deleted, archived or filed. ↩︎

Hong Kong Not Safe for Companies: Entirely Predictable

The news that Hong Kong is not viewed as good place for Western companies is no surprise. After the failed attempts at democracy in then 2010s Beijing began to crack down in earnest. They started with the protestors, then the free press, then the legislature, and then the judiciary.

With a complete loss of democratic government in a Western-antagonistic. authoritarian regime, there is no reason for any Western companies to be in Hong Kong versus another safer city in the region.

Personally, I don’t think I’d travel to Hong Kong — much less the mainland — if I had the chance. I’m sure that hawkish writings here on and on social media have me on the Chinese government’s map.

If I can’t travel to Hong Kong because of outspoken writing in the US, why would any entire company want to risk placing staff there? (Well, at least outside of trying to make as much $$$ as possible in the Chinese market).

It’s a long way to 217

A common Republican refrain is to say that “the government that governs best is the government that governs least.” By that standard, House Republicans are doing a fantastic job.

Jim Jordan “beat” Austin Scott in a vote for the speakership, Politico. 124. Scalise got 113 votes Tuesday. 124 is far from 217.

I’m not the only one that doesn’t see 217 as achievable for Jordan.

I don’t even think 217 is achievable with only R votes.

This is the natural culmination of the “burn it all down” mentality that came to Washington with the Tea Party (note: The Squad is not far from that mentality). Multiply that with MAGA and this is the expected outcome.

I expect that the Democrats are more than happy to let the Republicans stay in massive disarray. No need to make the case to voters that they aren’t responsible, wait until the shutdown gets closer and then start hammering at how they can’t even get their own house in order to begin to govern at all.

Realistically, I don’t think there is real pressure for them to figure this out yet. But it won’t be long before the combination of Ukraine, Israel and a budget to bring real pressure.

It may strengthen the speakership by the end of it. The speaker may not end up more powerful, but possibly have more staying power. Either the House adjusts the rules so that it becomes hard enough to depose a speaker that someone will take the position, or it stays rotating every few weeks because any given rep can call to vacate.

The most likely outcome may be a quasi-bi-partisan coalition forms to nominate someone relatively non-partisan. Or perhaps the middle ground, let McHenry have limited powers so the house can function. That’s a long way from certainty, to be sure.

But 217 R votes doesn’t look achievable by anybody. (One rep remarked that Jesus couldn’t get 217.)

Lightroom Lens Blur

Lightroom Lens Blur

I just installed the Lightroom beta with early access to the lens blur — and its unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I’ve played with a couple of these before, it actually works.

Now, this is too soon for a full scale review, these are just a couple of photos I’ve used it on.

But unlike pretty much everything else ever, this is believable.

I’ve always had three use cases, in this order:

  1. Lower background distractions like telephone poles, or blur out a major distraction like someone else in the photo
  2. Lower noise in the photo, especially if the background is already dark
  3. Add higher bokeh just because it makes for a better photo

In the first image you can see that Gavrel’s jersey gets blurred out, but I don’t think you’d notice if it weren’t for the before and after. With a brush adjustment you don’t notice at all, it just becomes a light blur.

All images if you want to compare

All link to full size.

What is the Huntress M365 MDR?

It is a SOC.

My posts on this are still my most viewed so I want to clarify: it’s definitely a SOC. RocketCyber is a competitor, SaaS Alerts is not.

Huntress was clever and called it an MDR, presumably because — whatever it would mean — an MDR for M365 would be an entirely new product category.

But if you dig in with Huntress people, and dig into their marketing collateral, you’ll see that it is very clearly a SOC.