Life

Inbox Zero

Beware of your inbox, it’s nothing but a convenient organizing system for other people’s agendas…

I’ve kept my inbox zero for a few years now, which has helped me to focus more on “getting things done” and essentially giving me a “mind like water” – free to space to focus on other things.

Basic Move: Have more than 1 email address:

I have two email addresses: one that I use for conducting general business & for signing up for various web applications, and one for more important conversations. The first, I don’t check all day long unless I need to activate / cancel a subscription to something. Because things that you sign up for on the web have a habit of sending you plenty of ad / junk / useless mail after that, and I like to keep this mass clear of my main email account. I check that email account just once a day, scan through it, don’t delete anything, and respond to anything that needs acting on.
On the second email, that’s the core of my life. And so I check it once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Everything there I open and act upon either by:

acting immediately on the task presented (usually replying to the email or doing something that it asks for – only if it takes less than 2 minutes to handle)
archiving the email if I think that I may need it again someday
make a task note in evernote related to the email (you can also send the email direct to Evernote for automatic task creation)
or simply delete it

…until the inbox is empty.

If You Have 1000+ Old emails in the Box

Go through them 100 or so at a time with the above process. Don’t read the new ones. Just try working through 100 here and there. Schedule time on an egg-timer to take a whack at them. (If you want lots more advice on this area, check out You Are Not Your Inbox, which I really loved.)

Here’s some useful “no-nos”:

Turn off all notifications

Social networks have a habit of sending you notifications if someone friends / likes / connects / mentions you. Switch them all off! Whenever you choose to visit those sites, all those notifications will be there anyway and you can deal with them all at once. For some people, this already cuts down their inbox flow by half.

Don’t be interrupted, distracted by incoming mail while you’re actually getting things done. You decide when to process your inbox (I do it 2 times a day), but I’d advise checking email in the afternoon where possible so that you protect the peak energy hours of your mornings for your best work.

Do not mark as unread

To-do items are hereby banned from your inbox, you should move them to your “to-do” list, folder, anywhere else. (For me it’s into Evernote).

Do not use priority inbox.

Turn it off; you don’t need it any more. Classic inbox all the way. Those little yellow “important” markers? Turn those off too. They’re nothing but a distraction.

What about you? Any ideas and advice?

Note: I use Skitch to do screenshots. It’s cool.

Music

Performing music has and I hope will always remain a core part of my life.

Some of my first memories are of my Dad singing away his sadness with a beer after midnight, my Grandfather smiling from the big-band stage as people danced to the old-time rhythms he played on the drums, and how much better a white suit looked on me whenever I had a musical instrument in my hands, even though I was just 3 years old…

Whether it was blues, rock ‘n’ roll, cabaret, heavy metal, Christian worship or celtic rock, I revelled in every moment of my music career in all the places where I’ve performed, each country and each concert. But most of all I loved the feeling of comradeship which is the glue that holds together any lasting music group, and experiencing life with my good friends, filling the space between the notes…

What do I listen to? Check out this list.

Here’s a short video clip of some of our performances:

Biking – Cycling – Bicycling

Like most boys, I’ll never forget my first bike.

Brought to me as a present from my grandparents, it was shiny red, with a racing flag on the front of it. Unfortunately a few weeks later, it was stolen by some local bullies who left if on a nearby rubbish dump, where I found it luckily after a long search, however it was quite broken.

But that somehow didn’t stop me finding a way to make money later on for another bicycle so that I could escape from chores at home, exams at school and find a quick way to turn up at my friend’s house for a second hot meal in the evening.

I’ve had a lot of bicycles since then. I even had a custom built racing bike that had my name on it, designed by my Dad, which I loved to ride, especially when I should have been in school.

I even had another bike that got stolen once again by local bullies and throw in a pond, another given to me by a drug dealer, and the last one given to me my good friend, the dentist.

As a teenager, I joined the local cycling club near Preston, Lancashire called “Team Rapide”. I spent a evening each week doing 10km time trials, and usually a 100km+ trip at the weekend with my best friends at that time, Andrew Thornley, James Hancock and especially Chris McGibbon.

Since I started out on the walk of life, I didn’t do much more cycling until I met my wife to be, who has been on numerous trips with me, including cycling the length of Croatia along the coast, as well as following the river Danube down from Germany, through the whole of Austria to Slovakia.

Recently I’ve noticed that there’s a trailer attached to my current bicycle, with my daughter in it, eager to go out an explore the world by bike. I hope that she’ll share the same joy that cycling has brought to my life.