Post-Flu, I now face enough work to nearly make me unwell again! I am behind on email, blog posts, comments, responses, feedback, and rss feeds (again). So, time for another Clean-Up! This time, a bit more ambitious . . .

Here is my goal–by the end of this week (meaning by Friday at 5:00 pm!), I will achieve Inbox Zero in all my email accounts, reply to all posts, comments, and the like.

This will be a busy week, but starting with a tangible (and specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely) goal that will completely energize me by the end is a great way to begin a Monday.

First focus? My NYU email account.

Have to go, some responses that need my attention . . .

My multitasking met its match this week, when I finally left work a bit early on Friday with a case of the flu. I could not keep anything down, had a temperature of over 100, and with weakness so quick and intense that it took me nearly 20 minutes to struggle walking the 3 blocks from the train, it had all the symptoms of the flu. All the symptoms except it did not last the 3 to 5 days I remember.

I got the flu shot, and believe that is the reason why it was not as severe as it was in my early 20’s, when I lived alone and was unable to get out of bed for 5 days.

What is the lesson for multitasking? Well, quite frankly, it stops. All the plans I had for replying to my students’ blogs and forum posts? Stopped. Working with the class I am taking? Halted. Preparing to turn a peer-reviewed abstract into a full paper? No chance. Consulting? Forget it. Work, play, walking the dogs, reading? None of them. The flu, and anything unforeseen, ruins all of the overplanning we do. Multitasking stops completely. Even this posting itself is being done from my BlackBerry while recovering upstate by the fire with the snow gently falling outside.

The lesson? In finally being able to think a bit more clearly after being in a fog for days, I am wondering if multitasking and planning every last moment of available time leaves no time and energy for the unplanned.

Perhaps this is something I should, ironically, begin to plan for?

The New York Times (yes, I enjoy reading a paper newspaper in the morning over coffee) has an interesting article today, Friends, Until I Delete You. It was about protocols, or the lack thereof, regarding dropping / unfriending / blocking / unfollowing / defriending people on Facebook (and by default even on Twitter, my primary networking hub, as well as rss feeds and blogrolls). Getting a free Whopper from Burger King aside, this issue will only grow in discussion as the general trend toward Managing Multimembership increases.

I used to accept all invitations, though find it increasingly difficult to keep up and communicate with the people who I am really interested in following and engaging in ongoing discussions. Currently, I do not accept all invitations in Facebook or even return following in Twitter. Let’s face it, if I have not spoken to somebody since high school or college or for ten years, is there much evidence I really want to suddenly start now? There are often reasons why we lose touch (as well as some good reasons for begining again, I suppose).

I often do accept if the person appears interesting, but tastes and needs and wants do change and develop over time. 

Don’t get me wrong, this issue is not necessarily a personal one; it is more a recognition that I have limited time and resources. I am simply not able or interested in following or reading people who, ultimately, do not meet the WIIFM? (What’s In It For Me?) factor.  Very subjective, but then again what isn’t? (Ahh, I love qualitative research!)

I wish I have more time and energy, but there is a limit. Thus, instead of my own focusing on particulars about unfriending, I prefer to focus on following those who really make a difference in my life, work,  and research.

I have blogged several times about my desire and struggle to be able to create blog posts from my BlackBerry. I am not satisfied with Postie or the built-in emailable blog posting capability of WordPress. Too many delays and punctuation and formatting issues to make them reliable solutions.

However, I think I may have found a solution in the recently upgraded WordPress 2.7 “Press This” feature.

Press This is a shortcut bookmark feature to save on a browser for fast blog postings when on a web page of interest. Instead of saving it to my desktop browser, I saved the link to my BlackBerry browser. I opened the bookmark on my phone, was given the most basic posting options, and this post is the result. Press This allows me to post directly to my blog without opening my blog’s full admin screen (which does not open on my BlackBerry due to all the coding and features there).

This is my second post using Press This, and I wanted to share this success with anybody out there who is also struggling to post to a WordPress blog from a BlackBerry.

Congratulations to Doodle, my favorite free meeting scheduling and online polling site; they just got their .com address!

While this may not seem like a major step, the company is a Swiss firm that is increasingly international in scope; so much so that it appears it realized it had to have a .com domain name. With this, Doodle will undoubtedly become more widespread and accepted by an American audience (especially as their previous website was the somewhat difficult to remember doodle.ch).

I have yet to see a faster and easier meeting scheduling website, and already use it for collaborative international synchronous meetings, as well as finding times for my online class to meet when we needed to change a live meeting day. As I started to use and rely on Doodle for scheduling over the past few months that I have been using it, I wish all those involved with it the best for their success.

This past week I raised the issue of rebranding my blog by updating my tagline. Thanks to all those wonderful colleagues who offered their comments on this, I am making an update and will “try it on” for a week or so. If I like it, I will keep it; if it still feels somehow incomplete or inaccurate, I will adjust it again.

So, I went from:

Reflective practice in organizational learning, educational technology, and postmodern society.

to

Fostering the practice of postmodern learning and research.

I believe this includes my passions:

• reflective practice
• learning paradigms
• teaching and learning
• postmodernism and post-structuralism
• constructivism and critical theory
• qualitative research
• technology enhanced learning and educational technology
• communities of practice

I wonder if those who know me (or those who may have only recently met me for the first time) think this “fits?”

A colleague accused me (or rather busted me, to use her words!) of mulitasking during one of our Connected Futures CP2tech01 field trips, to which I responded that multitasking is more about “working to capacity.” I like framing mulitasking in that way better - mulititasking is working to capacity!

Of course, work and capacity are both words that can be defined in many different ways. Ask any mother, student, knowledge worker, or community of practice technology steward!

Yesterday I spoke about the success I had with Inbox Zero at work. That should make starting the day today much easier.

However, I was not as successful cleaning through my inbox at home as I hoped. This is what happened – I have become successful at removing junk and clutter from my home inbox, so none of that was present. Instead, the 30 or so emails I have there all require either Defer or Do (to relate to the 5 options for handling email).

This is the bottleneck; they all require work.

The items that have been deferred are the ones I am handling first. I am taking the main point and scheduling time to handle each of them. Alternatively, I am starting to do them as well. This is the gap – each of them requires a chunk of time to accomplish what is in the email or what it is reminding me to do.

My strategy? I see it as two-fold:

1. Handle all new email as they arrive, selecting to Delete, Delegate, Respond, Defer, or Do it so they do not increase my work later on. Begin to keep up from now on.
2. Handle 2-3 emails already in my inbox each day until I am caught up.

This seems realistic for me, and I have found that having the greatest plans in the world will amount to nothing if I cannot implement them.  I will report back . . .

I have heard some colleagues speak about Inbox Zero, and this is exactly what I accomplished before I left the office on Friday.

What is it? Inbox Zero is a strategy to end the day with nothing in my inbox. Not a single email. Nothing read (those should be either deleted or filed) and nothing unread. Empty. Clean. Ready for Monday. A new start. No longer overwhelmed. Not lost in data. Caught up. Free.

Got the picture?

When Monday morning at the office comes, I will start up Outlook and know that anything that arrives from Friday night to Monday morning will be new and need attending. As this was a major accomplishment for me, I will struggle to remain caught up.

There is a great slideshow that demonstrates this, and I liked the five immediate options for handling email (delete, delegate, respond, defer, do) that Merlin Mann developed, all of which get it out of the Inbox. Hopefully having those references here will better help others process the sheer quantity of stuff we get bombarded with every day.

One thing I learned along the way is that while some email has information in it I need for upcoming tasks, I still file those in folders using keywords and then put tasks on my calendar to complete the items later. I don’t forget them, and have things organized for future reference. I then know where to find the filed information without having it taking up space and needing to be constantly re-read in the Inbox.

Next step is to bring this to my home Inbox, which is pretty clean already, but another hour or so, and it should also be Inbox Zero.