On 08:11 AM 7/12/02, Barry A. Warsaw wrote:
>This is a critical point about digests, IMO. A digest is a way to
>amortize the interruption factor of email. While email is great, it's
>also disruptive in the way a phone call at the office is disruptive.
>It tends (or does for me ;) to want to pull your attention to the
>email immediately, pre-empting all other work. This happens for me
>because until I look at some part of the email, I don't know whether
>it's my boss asking me a question, or a fellow bass player asking
>whether it's useful to boil strings. :)
>
>So, because most digests only get delivered once or a few times a day,
>I cut down on the number of interruptions to my daily workflow.
Funny, I thought that was what filters were for.
I have a special filter to transfer email to/from my boss and co-workers
into a company email folder. It starts by filtering on our company domain
name, and then I add in anyone who uses a non-company email address. This
filter runs last, after I have filtered off mailing list email, etc. When
I have certain people that *really* need my prompt attention, I create a
special filter with a special sound that is played (I leave my "new mail"
sounds off) just for them. That way I can safely ignore email while
working on projects, but if the special sound is played I switch over, see
and reply to that email, and then get back to the project. This works
really well, because that person sees me as very responsive to their
communications, and yet I also get a lot of work done on deadline. :-)
When reading email, the company mailbox gets read first. Mailboxes for any
special projects get high priority. The inbox gets glanced at to see if
anything important managed to not be filtered where I expected it to
go. Mailing list folders are in a sub-folder, and are sorted by tech lists
and hobby lists so that I can leave the hobby list folder "closed" and not
be bothered/tempted by the unread messages inside the various list folders
themselves.
I don't quite understand how others manage without filters like this.
jc
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