Sorry for not blogging yesterday. Actually, has it been a few days? maybe. Ugh.
I spent most of today switching email clients. Not because Entourage isn’t a good client, but i am in serious need of changing my habits, and changing clients is maybe a good way to enact some of those changes.
I experimented yesterday with apple’s Mail program (the one that comes with OSX) and after noting that it does most of the things that i need it to do (dealing with rules, filters, folders, etc), i though that i’d try it and see if by switching to it i might be able to revisit and actually change the way i deal with email.
The hardest part about dealing with problems with your own efficiency is being able to step back and recognize just what the hell you are doing that isn’t working. This isn’t easy. I’m a horrible creature of habit, and i am one of the most forgetful people on the planet. An age old problem i suffer from is not remembering to do important things. At 10pm i can say to myself “i have to change advertising tonight!’ and then three hours later completely forget. A possible solution to this problem not only helps address bad habits, but takes advantage of my own obsessive qualities. And it lead to me revising how i deal with email.
I’m an obsessive email checker. Not because im desperate for email, just… out of habit, i think. It’s part of my ‘at the computer’ routine. I am also an email hoarder. I never delete anything (its only in recent years that i delete SPAM for chrissakes). I spend most of my time organizing mail as it comes in, dealing with spam, flagging and sorting emails to answer at some later date. the problem is, i never seem to answer any of the damn emails.
I’m sure there is some deep, disturbing psychological reason for all of this, but i took some tips from the 43 folders site (great site, btw, to whoever it was the pointed me to it :P) and i decided that i needed to simplify, and just become more effective at dealing with mail. For starters, I am now deleting mail that really there is no need to save (i still save fan mail - and thats most of what i get) i have a much better and actually effective folder storage system. A big change is that I am taking the few moments it takes to answer emails that i can answer quickly. That really is the case with MOST emails anyway. I’m not really sure why, but there is a subtle something about responding to email in Apple’s Mail that just seems to work better for me on a subconscious level than Entourage. Maybe it’s because it’s simpler, i dunno.
There’s no way i can catch up with all my past emails, but maybe i can do a better job from here on out. Just one more step on my path to actually getting organized in my life… Oh, and the thing about remembering things? I joked with Seraphim about how given my obsessive email checking, i wish i could just get email msg’s that could remind me of things… and when i realized that Ical could do this, and send me ‘alarms’…
There’s hope for me yet.
- pirotunes: Dj Wally - Yes It’s True -
I sooo know what you mean with the whole ‘forgetting to do stuff’.
I have a Final project to do at college, where i’m planning to do my own story, with some of my own characters. But i can never find time for any of it.. it realleh bugs me and hurts.
Hehe.. you just reminded me, time to sort out my emails. ^^
Here.. let me blow your schedule up:
Air episode 7 is out (at least at anime-direct.com).
Koi has ep 7 out now… usual locations (for Air).
I watched episode 7 - Dream - before. Might i say i haven’t seen anything that has upsetted me like that, in a long time.. =(
eep… I’m still getting over the LAST episode (6: Minagi/Michiru)…. ah well… for some reason my torrents always go slow as mud (damn satellite ISP grumble die die die) so it’ll be tomorrow or Monday before I get to see it.
i try no to force my self to feel the same way as others but with your email i must say i know what you mean, i just had the longest 2 weeks dealing with my email to where im at the point now where ive given up temporarly.
and when did this become an air forum, dont get me wrong i love air im dling episode 7 right now but still this is fred art not air.
any ways ja ne.
You fools…*why* did you have to post that? I was just about to go do some needed shopping. Now I have to wait until the ep is downloaded, at the very least! ;P
very very sory for double posting
but vexx i just checked that anime-direct site and i noticed you have to pay every month, im not sure what they have but y dont you just use animesuki.com its free and it works good for me, once again sory for double posting
Just downloading it right now. I didn’t check the blog in a while, and thought about announcing the release of ep 7, but it appears I’ve been beat. Oh well. Time to rewatch the Kanon episodes for now…
43 Folders is an excellent site. He also linked to marktaw, http://www.marktaw.com/, recently and I find that site helpful, too.
My best tip came from a “Getting rid of Procrastination” book, though. When time is tight, pull out your kitchen timer. Set it. Stop surfing the web when you are done. Works really really well. I never realized how much time I spent reading blogs, email, and blogging myself until I set a timer.
1) We only talk about Air because its Fred’s fault that I’ve gotten hooked on it. Fred’s already too far gone to help
2) Anime-direct.com is $10/month and was mostly useful for those folks who are prevented from torrenting or don’t understand how to set it up. I use a couple of sites for torrent including animesuki.com.
3) However, my torrent speeds are very slow — as far as I can tell, my satellite downlinks are throttled for anything that is a continuous packet stream after a certain point (350MB/hr) and for some reason the torrents never get faster than 12KB/s or so … usually 3 or 4KB/s … because its somehow not using the satellite aggregator. I can grab the occasional file from anime-direct.com very quickly (as long as I watch the caps) but lately I’ve been having trouble with their server sending the “I’m done” packet when it clearly hasn’t sent the entire file. They admit that some customers are prone to this but they don’t know why (hmmm, they use MS-IIS Server…. heh).
On the email topic… sounds like Fred and I both love to sort mail but actually *answering* it … eep
Heh, well I know what you mean with the e-mails, I constantly check my e-mail, like 7 times every half hour. I dunno y, but I do know it can’t be healthy :p.
Answer e-mail? Hrm…I should probably start doing that sometime. I’m getting better at *organizing* it, though…
Hm do you think the latest mt strip will be put up today? I don’t mind if it’s late at all, I just don’t think I can stand to keep refreshing the page. It’s making my finger ache. I want to know if I can save myself the torment (though I’ll probably still do it anyway out of habit >.>).
Gyah. Speaking of full emails I have 630 emails. 230 unread spam emails o_O I really need to put the spam blocker on.
And yes I watched episode 7 of air today (as well as episode 7 of ah! my goddess if anyone else is keeping up with the TV series). It kept surprising me. Really this plot, I just have no clue what is going to happen next. It really keeps me on edge. I like it. I get fed up of animes where you can guess the ending two episodes in -.-
And er good luck with taming your inbox
God what am I going crazy o_O it’s sunday! I REALLY need to start sleeping.
Ignore the last post >.>
May I reccomend the mozilla thunderbird e-mail client, it is an excellent tool for keeping up with RSS feeds and recieving POP and SMTP. It also has an import feature that keeps all your old settings, not sure if it can import from entourage, but it worked excellently for me with outlook express. Also if you are having trouble with remmebering to do things look for mozilla sunbird which is a calender program, currently at version 0.2, but very stable.
Any of our MacOS users have anecdotal experience with Thunderbird under MacOS? (is that what OS you’re using, Mark?) I love Thunderbird but so far have only used it in WinXX and Linux platforms.
Damn… the tracker (Jasio.net as directed from animesuki.com) I’m using to get Air ep. 7 (and a couple of Nanoha episodes is coughing up hairballs and won’t respond (sometimes not even pinging) … anyone else still downloading Air ep. 7? If so, any problems?
Hmmm, the Jasio.net tracker seems back up ….
Too bad they seem to be the main source for Koi fansubs…
Carry on.
I can sympathize somewhat. I prescreen my e-mail online before POP3-ing it down to Netscape Mail on my computer. The good part is I never get spam taking up hard drive space. The bad part is since I’ve already read it all I often just don’t bother downloading it until there’s a week’s worth built up, so people expecting a response from me have to wait a lot.
I’m very organsied with it all though. As opposed to my father. He files a lot of the e-mail he gets in but that still leaves hundreds of e-mails in his inbox stretching back months. Then he complains to me that Netscape Mail is so slow.
My big problem with organizing my e-mail is the fact that I’m not particularly good at organizing *anything*. I have (well, *had* before reinstalling Windows XP yesterday) a decent set of Rules set up in Outlook to redirect about half of incoming e-mail to specific folders…of course, the other half has slowly but steadily built up in my inbox, which spans…(scans Inbox on Windows machine)…over a year now, with 334 unread messages. That doesn’t count the hundreds of unread messages in the *other* folders.
Eep. Better start reading…