Semantic Blab 1: The results are in!
02 February 2010
A month ago I wrote a• limit email to twice a day (11am & 4pm)
• auto-respond to all emails letting people know my plans
• ask clients to phone in an emergency
I did this under the Semantic Business Lab (Blab) label, with the promise to share my results. Here they are.
Results
Things I expected:
• No emergencies resulted. No one died.
• I got a lot more done (the key goal).
• Client response was overwhelmingly non-existent (no one had a significant problem)
Things I did not expect:
• It was sometime hard (really hard) not to click that button.
• I spoke to clients more by phone than usual. A huge plus.
• I received 15% more emails in Jan, but spent 30% less time responding. Another HUGE plus.
Conclusion
I'll admit it, I fell off the wagon a couple of times... but only when there was a really good reason to keep an eye on things.
But that seems reasonable to me. This is not some OCD rule-fest. It's a pragmatic solution to a real problem... one that can and should scale to fit the context.
As you'll probably have guessed I am keeping the system. It feels as though it's made a big difference on my productivity, and it's certainly made a huge impact on how I feel about my time. For the first time since I began work at IBM (1995), I feel like I am handling all my responsibilities without checking email 20 times a day.
That's worth a lot,
Nick
P.S. Watch out for more Semantic Blab Experiments coming soon.
Posted by Nick Warren at 9:47 AM
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