<div dir="ltr"><div><div>I'm not ad adherent of any zero inbox plans, although I try to keep my inbox under one page. <br><br></div>My main advice would be: Experiment, and find out what works best for you. Experiment, inspect, adapt, and iterate. Don't be afraid to try something that might end up being worse rather than better. <br><br>As an experiment, I would try:<br><ol><li>When those emails come in, clear them out of your inbox by adding them to a "little bits of work" queue. As long as the queue only contains small tasks, and is lightweight to manage (like an inbox folder), it shouldn't be a burden.<br></li><li>Block off specific appointments with yourself to do "little bits of work". This could be half an hour per week, or 2 hours per day, or whatever. Start with your best guess. <br></li></ol>This would allow you to clear your inbox without context switching, which sounds like a win. Plus it would avoid the risk of getting caught in a longer-than-expected editing session when you thought you were clearing your inbox.<br><br>Also, you would be accurately tracking how much time "little work" is taking, at a high level, for free. If your queue is growing, schedule more or longer sessions. Or, if your calendar is already full, blissfully drop the least interesting items from the queue. Or if you're a bit OCD or masochistic, have a second, separate ("low priority") queue that you will get to "someday". <br><br></div>This method wouldn't require any estimation (beyond "this looks small"). It would merely expose the reality of how much time this work takes, in aggregate. <br><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all"><div><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><span><font color="#888888"><br>Kevin Smith<br>Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation<br></font></span><font><font><i><font color="#888888"><br></font></i></font></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 3:14 PM, S Page <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:spage@wikimedia.org" target="_blank">spage@wikimedia.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><span class="">On Wed, Sep 9, 2015 at 10:32 AM, Kevin Smith <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ksmith@wikimedia.org" target="_blank">ksmith@wikimedia.org</a>></span> wrote:<br></span><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><span class=""><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div> I'm imagining someone whose "todo" queue is growing linearly while their "done" pile eternally remains empty. It seems odd that new higher-priority work would be coming in so fast
that not only can the old work not get done first, but the new work
can't either. <br></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>The problem for me comes from ruthless prioritization vs. dealing with new small inbox issues in the moment. I'm sure I read some advice to do the latter instead of the overhead of managing an enormous growing pile of postponed work. Especially with documentation, tagging yet another mail thread "ought to document this nugget some day" vs. spending just-a-little-bit more time getting it done here and now. The problems are<br>a) If there are too many small things you can get done in the moment, then those moments take over your day.<br>b) Hoftstadter's Law [1].<br><br>I guess the answer is to budget your time better. Thanks for any advice, though I don't expect any because answering this is not in your quarterly goals or current sprint :-).<br><br>[1] "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law."
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter's_law" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter's_law</a><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br></font></span></div></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>-- <br><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr">=S Page WMF Tech writer<span></span></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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