

Sid Savara: Never Check Email First Thing In The Morning - cwan
http://sidsavara.com/personal-development/do-not-check-email-in-the-morning

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wccrawford
I'm having trouble with the 'if you don't know about a burning fire, it isn't
your problem yet' bit.

Now, granted, perhaps they should have called if there was a fire... But
perhaps your portion of the fix can wait until you get into the office, but
should really be worked on as soon as possible. Should they wake you up with a
phone call to tell you that, or send that email? If you are known to ignore
emails for the first few hours, you'll be getting that wake-up phone call.

No, instead, I do exactly the opposite of this. I check my email first, get
all the piddly stuff out of the way first, and then settle in for some real
coding.

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abyssknight
_#1 – Ignorance Is Bliss..fully Productive_

No, this gets you fired. At a startup, this gets you bad PR or worse, your
servers burn in a fiery death as they get Slashdotted to heck and back while
you "work on something important."

 _#2 – It’s Not Your Todo List_

Actually, it is. I use Outlook's task pane to mark things for follow up.
Without it, I'd forget a lot of things.

 _#3 – It’s An Excuse To Lack Direction_

If you get enough email that this buys you enough time to get so distracted
you can't work, then you need a better spam filter, or a more private email
address. There is no reason you need to be on the front lines all the time.
Intelligent filtering can help.

 _#4 – Reaction vs “Proaction”_

Sometimes you need to react, because you didn't pro-act.

 _#5 – Searching For Excuses_

If the excuse is good enough to stop working, perhaps you need better work.

 _#6 – There’s No Set Time Limit_

So? Communication is more important than most menial tasks. Its the basis by
which things get designed, built, and maintained. Don't underestimate the
power of communication as a tool. Don't try to avoid it.

 _#7 – It Builds Expectation_

I don't always respond to people immediately, but I do like to think before I
reply. Sometimes I'll go off and draft have a reply, save it, and come back to
it. If its out of "working hours", I can leave it be til the next work day.
Otherwise, I top out at a couple of hours for latency. Why? Because I want
that expectation; to foster good team relationships and dependability.

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Dylanlacey
RE #3: I've honestly NEVER understood how people who are supposedly productive
and valuable employees can get SO MUCH email that it wastes a ton of their
time.

Just skim it and ignore the time wasting.

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ukdm
Not loading for me, cached text only version
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://sidsavara.com/personal-
development/do-not-check-email-in-the-
morning&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=BTv&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&strip=1)

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petervandijck
Equally: Never Check HN First Thing In The Morning

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syaz1
Sadly what my routine is. I have the OCD of getting my favourite RSS
subscriptions unread count to 0.

