Email Thoughts, Apps, & Workflow

I’m really not sure how to get started with this productivity series. There are 100 different directions I could go in. Before I dive into the details I thought I would expound on the different components of the productivity system that I listed out last time.

I’m going to start with the thing I am least excited about… email.

Whether we like it or not, email is a key tool in every company. It is everywhere, and it can feel like the emails are never-ending. My company uses the Microsoft 365 suite, so Outlook is my main email system. For my personal email I use Gmail. I’ve had an account since gmail came to be in the mid 2000’s. I rarely use personal email for communication. It is mostly mailing lists I’m subscribed to and lots of spam.

Overall I really like Outlook[1]. The Windows app is good. The iOS (& iPad OS) apps are excellent. I think the Mac app doesn’t look great, but it is workable. On all of my Apple devices I also use the Spark email app. I have both of my email accounts logged into both apps. I don’t have a good reason for using both. For the most part I use Outlook for work email and Spark for personal email.

My work email is mostly direct communication with coworkers. I keep that pretty clean. I usually end the day without any unread mail. Every now and then things might get backed up.In the past it wasn’t uncommon for me to have 300+ unread emails in my work inbox. There were a few examples of me missing something important, so now I don’t let that happen anymore.

The thing I struggle with most is keeping my inbox organized enough to quickly identify the emails that are associated with tasks and follow-ups. I don’t have a good system for that. I spend too much time searching for things that should be right at hand.

I’m torn on email. Communication is the most important thing in order to get effective work done. Yet, I definitely don’t feel like I am getting much done when I am wading through my inbox. I try not to send stupid emails. I try not to add to the noise. I try not to reply unless I can add something valuable.

My aspirational strategy right now is to go on 10 minute email blitzes and get through everything I can. I want to triage as quickly as possible. I will filter for unread mail and then quickly process that list for 10 minutes. I will delete the stuff I don’t need. I will archive the stuff that doesn’t require a response, but I might want to refer back to later. I will flag the emails that require me to respond, do something, or read something in more depth. I will then dedicate more focused time to that flagged list.

This workflow is good because I can easily do this from my computer, my phone, or my iPad. The phone or iPad can be particularly fast because of the swipe gestures. The way I have Spark set up it makes it easy to read a bunch of email and quickly take one of my three actions on it.

I say this is aspirational because I only achieve my objective about half of the time. My main goal with email is to get through it and act on the items I need to, while avoiding the time suck of living in your inbox. I don’t want to leave email open all day and screw around just waiting for that unread badge to show up.

For years I have turned off all email notifications. I am amazed by how many people have popups on their screen every time an email arrives. You are just asking for email to ruin your productivity if you allow it to interrupt you hundreds of times per day[2].

I do have alerts set up for certain people, namely my boss and several other important people that I work with. If they send me something I want to know about it. I used to use the VIP setting in the iOS email app to get an alert on my phone. I then set up a Microsoft Power Automate script to give me a push notification to my phone for a few senders. Ultimately the Power Automate is clunky, so I recently went back to the VIP method. It is literally the only thing I use Apple’s Mail app. It blows my mind that Outlook doesn’t have better built in functions for this. It is easy to set up with rules on the desktop app, but I want to get a push notification on my phone.

Email is really important. It is a key technology we use every day. It consumes a ton of my time. I am just not sure I have a lot to say about it. I don’t feel like I have a great system. I’m glad that I have enough discipline to stay out of my inbox at least until I have organized my own tasks first. Then I will open the floodgates and let everybody else have a say about what I should be doing.

Other than that simple philosophy, I am not great at email. I don’t have a good folder system. I am constantly losing emails. I let myself get sucked into threads. Sometimes I respond emotionally when I need to take a more measured approach.

I would like to develop a clearer workflow for how I deal with email. I would like to create a better system for keeping track of things I need to follow up on in the future. I’d like to explore those things further and look for some good articles and tips on how to handle them. I will plan to check back in with email later on.

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1. Outlook is a huge upgrade from Lotus Notes, which we were forced to use up until 3 years ago.  ↩

2. Guess it depends on how much email you get every day. I easily get over 100 messages per day.  ↩

Productivity System Series Intro

For most of my working life I have been trying to figure out how to take effective notes. I’ve struggled to organize them in a way where they can be useful in the future. Over the last 15 years I have used several apps. I’ve had many false starts. I’ve been really frustrated.

I still struggle, but I am going to write about my productivity processes in hopes of clarifying them for myself. I’ve learned a lot over the last few years about what works for me. I want to bring it all together and hopefully sharing it with you will help make that happen.

There are so many productivity tools and apps out there. It can feel overwhelming. Most are very similar. Each one has its own strengths, weaknesses, and nuances. I have wasted a lot of time jumping from one to the next.

Ultimately the applications don’t really matter, but you need to have a general structure for how you want to keep your notes. Note-taking, and writing in general, is a major component of an overall productivity system.

I plan for this productivity series of blog posts to focus on note taking, but I do want to outline all of the different components of my productivity system.

• An email system & workflow
• Calendar System
• Task Manager
• Structured Note Taking System
• Unstructured Note System
• Journal

There are tons of productivity bloggers and YouTube-ers out there that do a great job. I will surely be linking to and referencing many of my favorites. I’m not going to pretend that I am adding anything new to all the great productivity content . However, I am sharing what has been most relevant to me. By taking the time to explain my process hopefully I can further clarify to myself what I am doing and why I am doing it.

I think it is helpful to observe how other people manage their own productivity. It is healthy to see how other people work effectively. You will almost never find the answer by merely copying what somebody else does. You need to make it work for you.

Our systems are only as good as the time we dedicate to them. Ideally we are trying to find a way to manage everything in as little time as possible. But you will have to dedicate time. Most people fail because they let the system sit for too long and it becomes irrelevant.

All of those tasks become a massive amount of work to go through, so we never do. Eventually we will get motivated and try starting with something new…. Rinse and repeat.

This is how I currently am with email. I still haven’t found something that Is helpful and easy to stick with.

I have felt better about my note taking systems, but there is still friction I want to work through. I am on the verge of trying some new apps[1], but before I do that I want to make sure I have clarity about what I need.

Whenever I step out of my cozy app system I get overwhelmed by how many tools are out there. With note-taking in particular, new apps are popping up all of the time. Notion & Roam Research look to be strong contenders that are new on the scene.

Join me as I try to make my productivity system seem coherent. Maybe you will be exposed to a new idea or app that will help you out.

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1. Or returning to my old friend Evernote!  ↩

Game of Thrones Stumbles to the Finish Line

I was planning to write about every episode of Game of Thrones this season. I quickly realized I wasn’t going to be able to make that happen. I liked episode 2 fine, but after The Long Night I realized I didn’t have anything to add to the conversation about this show. It is hard for me to articulate, but plenty of other people have tried. This post on Mashable captures a lot of the same feelings I have had about the show over the last couple of seasons.

Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 4 had all the hallmarks of classic Thrones — secrets revealed, a shocking twist, the death of a major character — but unlike the show’s previous success in delivering big moments, all of them fell flat in “The Last of the Starks.” The greater reveal of Jon’s true parentage to big players like Sansa, Arya, and Tyrion happened entirely offscreen, Euron’s dragon-killing scorpion shot came out of left field, and Missandei’s capture and execution did little besides make both Daenerys and the audience angry.

I’ve also been enjoying watching the YouTube videos by Alt Shift X. He had a particularly harsh review of The Long Night in which I agreed with a lot of his criticisms.

Overall I feel like the show is getting a lot of hate this year. It seems like everybody is just ready to get to the end. I go back and forth on whether the criticism is deserved or not. I still enjoy watching the show. I also enjoy listening the conversation that is happening all over the web, and in my office. I like the experience of having a show like Game of Thrones on television. At the same time it is completely clear that they are doing a terrible job sticking the landing. It is yet to be determined what kind of legacy Game of Thrones is going to have. Maybe JRRM had the right idea when he decided to just never end the damn thing.

➔ How ‘Game of Thrones’ forgot how to write a real twist

Game of Thrones Season 8 - Winterfell

Leading into the premiere of season 8 I am nervous. This series is going to be difficult to end in a satisfying way. I’ve tried to avoid thinking too much about how I want the series to end. I need to allow myself to just go along for the ride.

This series started out as a well made character drama with an authentic setting. Over the years it has changed. As the seasons have rolled by I haven’t made time to go back and re-watch the early episodes. I imagine the show would be almost unrecognizable. With the body count of “main” characters over the first 3 seasons things have changed a lot. The stories that I connected with the most have ended. Some of the characters that I didn’t care much about early on are the ones that have endured to the end.

The way I watch the show has changed quite a bit too. I binged the first 4 seasons over the course of a few months. I think I caught up just before season 5 started. Being forced to slow down and consume only 1 episode a week led me to do lot more reading of articles and listening to podcasts… probably over-analyzing things. At this point a significant amount of my enjoyment of the show comes from listening to Dave Chen & Joanna Robinson talk about it on their podcast, A Cast of Kings.

Before “Winterfell” aired on Sunday night I watched the Screen Junkies recap of the first 7 seasons. It is 52 minutes long, but in the same duration as watching one episode you are reminded of all the major plot points from the season. Joanna Robinson ran down her top episodes from the series and talked about them on the Still Watching podcast. I haven’t listened to this yet, but I plan to go back and watch some of my favorite episodes on the list as this current season airs.

So this brings us to season 8. I expected the first episode to be a place setting episode, and that is what we got. I was surprised by the inconsistency in the tone. At times it was funny, slap-stick even. At times it was cheesy. The end was like a horror movie. Overall it was fine. It set up the pieces for the final season… which is all it really needed to do.

I really disliked one thing about the episode. The ability to ride a dragon seemed like a very special and very Targaryen skill. I thought the moment when we saw Jon Snow ride a dragon would be an important moment that confirmed his parentage. In this episode, riding a dragon meant nothing. It seemed to be table stakes for dating Daenerys.

The whole dragon riding sequence felt lame. (That was the cheesy part.) I’m not sold on the Jon/Dany relationship. There isn’t much chemistry there. Nothing like Cersei and Euron anyway.

I feel like I have been hating on GoT a lot over the last couple of seasons. I wasn’t a fan of the Arya storyline in season 6. Season 7 had some great visuals, but the idiotic plan to go capture a wight upset me. Even though I like to complain, I don’t even know what I want out of this final season. I guess I just want it all to make sense and go along with the character traits and motivations we have seen thus far. Ultimately I don’t care who is sitting on the iron throne… as long as it isn’t Cersei.

I think the “happy” ending to the show has Jon & Dany ruling together, but I highly doubt we will get an ending that could be described as “happy”. I think Jon will die… again. I bet Tyrion and the Stark girls will make it to the end of the show. I have no idea what is going to happen to Daenerys. I wouldn’t be surprised either way.

I’m looking forward to the rest of this final season of Thrones. It will be great to see what happens on the show and all, but I am really looking forward to the culture around the show. Every episode generates some great memes. There is good writing and good podcasts about the show. It always generates good discussions with friends. In a time when many shows are being dumped online at once and people watch at their own pace, GoT might be one of the last week-to-week shows that everybody is talking about all at the same time. I’m going to try to lean into that.

Game of Thrones Season 8 - Winterfell

Leading into the premiere of season 8 I am nervous. This series is going to be difficult to end in a satisfying way. I’ve tried to avoid thinking too much about how I want the series to end. I need to allow myself to just go along for the ride.

This series started out as a well made character drama with an authentic setting. Over the years it has changed. As the seasons have rolled by I haven’t made time to go back and re-watch the early episodes. I imagine the show would be almost unrecognizable. With the body count of “main” characters over the first 3 seasons things have changed a lot. The stories that I connected with the most have ended. Some of the characters that I didn’t care much about early on are the ones that have endured to the end.

The way I watch the show has changed quite a bit too. I binged the first 4 seasons over the course of a few months. I think I caught up just before season 5 started. Being forced to slow down and consume only 1 episode a week led me to do lot more reading of articles and listening to podcasts… probably over-analyzing things. At this point a significant amount of my enjoyment of the show comes from listening to Dave Chen & Joanna Robinson talk about it on their podcast, A Cast of Kings.

Before “Winterfell” aired on Sunday night I watched the Screen Junkies recap of the first 7 seasons. It is 52 minutes long, but in the same duration as watching one episode you are reminded of all the major plot points from the season. Joanna Robinson ran down her top episodes from the series and talked about them on the Still Watching podcast. I haven’t listened to this yet, but I plan to go back and watch some of my favorite episodes on the list as this current season airs.

So this brings us to season 8. I expected the first episode to be a place setting episode, and that is what we got. I was surprised by the inconsistency in the tone. At times it was funny, slap-stick even. At times it was cheesy. The end was like a horror movie. Overall it was fine. It set up the pieces for the final season… which is all it really needed to do.

I really disliked one thing about the episode. The ability to ride a dragon seemed like a very special and very Targaryen skill. I thought the moment when we saw Jon Snow ride a dragon would be an important moment that confirmed his parentage. In this episode, riding a dragon meant nothing. It seemed to be table stakes for dating Daenerys.

The whole dragon riding sequence felt lame. (That was the cheesy part.) I’m not sold on the Jon/Dany relationship. There isn’t much chemistry there. Nothing like Cersei and Euron anyway.

I feel like I have been hating on GoT a lot over the last couple of seasons. I wasn’t a fan of the Arya storyline in season 6. Season 7 had some great visuals, but the idiotic plan to go capture a wight upset me. Even though I like to complain, I don’t even know what I want out of this final season. I guess I just want it all to make sense and go along with the character traits and motivations we have seen thus far. Ultimately I don’t care who is sitting on the iron throne… as long as it isn’t Cersei.

I think the “happy” ending to the show has Jon & Dany ruling together, but I highly doubt we will get an ending that could be described as “happy”. I think Jon will die… again. I bet Tyrion and the Stark girls will make it to the end of the show. I have no idea what is going to happen to Daenerys. I wouldn’t be surprised either way.

I’m looking forward to the rest of this final season of Thrones. It will be great to see what happens on the show and all, but I am really looking forward to the culture around the show. Every episode generates some great memes. There is good writing and good podcasts about the show. It always generates good discussions with friends. In a time when many shows are being dumped online at once and people watch at their own pace, GoT might be one of the last week-to-week shows that everybody is talking about all at the same time. I’m going to try to lean into that.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

- Theodore Roosevelt

Westworld S2E10 - The Passenger

I certainly didn’t plan to wait this long to post about the Westworld finale, but here we are. I had such a negative reaction to it that I wanted to watch it again before I shared my opinion. However, I have still not watched it for a 2nd time. I really haven’t had a desire to.

I had commented that I thought the entire fate of the 2nd season rested on how successful the finale was. That does not bode well for Westworld season two.

The finale had so much going on. I don’t really even know how to start parsing exactly what happened. When I first watched the episode I had this feeling that it was an objectively bad episode of television. I was not able to envision a world where somebody enjoyed that episode as a satisfying conclusion to the season. However, I have expanded my thinking and acknowledge that some people may have enjoyed the episode and even the season as a whole.

I didn’t do a great job of communicating this in my last post, but my largest desire with the finale was to see a resolution for William. I thought about several things that William might be confronted with when he reached “the door”. I thought about what would happen when William & Delores met up again now that we were aware of their long history with one another. I wanted William to face the reality that he had killed his daughter and see how that experience shaped him. I wanted to know what in the hell Ford’s game was.

While some of this was explored in the finale, I don’t feel like any of it was satisfactorily answered or given a satisfying conclusion. To me this really felt like it was going to be William’s season, but in the end it appears he is living on to possibly make an appearance in season 3. Going into the finale it felt like this was going to be the end of William’s arc. We didn’t get an ending for him, and now I am not sure where it will go from here.

I thought the meeting between William and Delores made absolutely no sense. It did nothing to capitalize on the history that the show built with them this season. I was amazed at how awkward and pointless their whole interaction seemed. I hated every minute of it. After being set up as key characters that were on a crash coarse into one another this whole season the ending was a blunder.

We got the post credit sequence with William. I took that as a time in the distant future where he is forced to relive his decisions continuously only to come to the end and find out he was unable to change his true nature and he always arrives at the point where he kills his daughter. I wonder about the scope of this game he is forced to play. Does he have to relive his entire life from the beginning and he always arrives back at that same point? Or is he only reliving the very end part of his life then where does it pick up?

There really aren’t good answers for the man in black. It felt like the whole show was built around him. From early on in season 1 he was the most interesting thing about the show to me. I thought he would get a better resolution to his story this year. I’ve come to terms that my favorite character didn’t get a very nice 3rd act.

I enjoyed Season 1, but thought the ending and the resolution to “the maze” was sort of lame. I enjoyed a lot about Season 2. It had a couple of the best episodes of television I’ve seen in a while. However, the ending was so weird and unsatisfying that it left me wary of the entire show. I am not excited to see what happens next. I’m not sure I even care that much.

When you invest in a show too much it is almost certainly going to let you down. I expected something really great out of this season of Westworld. I didn’t get it.

Westworld S2E09 - Vanishing Point

I’m going right down to the wire, but I thought I should write something before the final episode of season 2.

I have a few thoughts about episode 9…

• Holy cow! William killed his own daughter! Of all the violence in the tv show that might be the most messed up thing I have seen yet.
• I am very confident that William is not a host. That would be lame from a storytelling perspective to have that shocking of a revelation right now. It would also downplay the importance of everything that has happened. I think he wishes he were a host, and that is why he is cutting his arm open at the end.
• I don’t understand what “the forge” is. At the beginning of the season I was so excited for everyone to meet up at “the valley beyond” aka “the door”. Now that it is the forge I have somehow lost some interest in it.

Overall season 2 has been extremely uneven. I was so excited at first to see Westworld come back. I might have been clouded by my excitement, but I thought the first 4 episodes of the season were great. The back half of the season has been all over the place. There were these two artistic side-episodes that loosely connected with the rest of what was going on this season. There was a very strange siege on “The Mesa” that highlighted a lot of the weaknesses of how this season was laid out.

With all of its ups and downs I think this has been a solid 2nd season that really hinges on the finale. If the finale is terrible, I will likely think of the entire season as terrible. If the finale is great I will forget the nit-picks and think of this as a great season of television.

I’m not sure how the finale would fall to one side or the other. I don’t even really know what I am hoping to see. I just hope it is good, and it makes sense. There have been so many things in the season that just don’t quite make sense. I’m ready for those things to be resolved. I don’t want to have to call on any further suspension of disbelief to make the season make sense.

It is hard for me to compare the 1st & 2nd seasons from an enjoyment perspective. To its credit, season 2 has made me want to go back and watch the 1st season over again, and I think it would be more meaningful to me this time around. It will be nice to see Delores as we once knew her, and try to forget about the murderous nonsensical Delores that we have seen much of this season. I think I enjoyed season 1 better because it was a new concept with all new characters. At the end of the first season I had no clue how they were going to keep it going strong for a second season. I have been pleasantly surprised.

I’d classify Westworld as one of my favorite shows. It is one of the few shows that I’ve gotten completely invested in the mystery. I listen to a podcast every week to keep up with what the heck is going on. I’ll be sad to see it go after tonights episode is over, but I will be cautiously optimistic for a 3rd season.

Westworld S2E08 - Kiksuya

Much like “Akane no Mai”, this episode was an aside to the main events happening in this season of Westworld. The time we learn the back story of Akecheta the leader of the Ghost Nation… taking us all the way back to the day Delores shot Arnold. It was a very well-made episode. Unlike “Akane No Mai” this one tied into the backstory of the park and helped us understand several questions from season one. I like it… but at the same time it is frustrating to completely step away from the main storylines. It did highlight the Valley Beyond, where everybody seems to be heading this season.

The imagery of the “the maze” was a big mystery in season one. At the end of that first season I still felt unsatisfied with the explanation. I still don’t think they have clearly defined what the maze is, but they showed us just how it seemed to appear everywhere last season and why certain hosts might be carving it into random things around the park. I don’t completely understand the concept of putting it under the scalps, but I’m willing to let that slide.

This episode highlighted something I have been thinking about quite a bit this season. The “woke” hosts seem to identify with a true version of themselves. For Maeve it is her role as a mother on the homestead. That seems to be what she identifies as her “true” self. She spends all of her energy trying to get back to her daughter from that role. In this episode Akecheta seems to identify with the role where he was the husband of Kohana. Similar to Maeve, he has dedicated the rest of his life to finding a way to reconnect with her… hopefully when he finds “the door” and enters the “right” world for him.

For the hosts it is unclear how these roles resonate for them as they become awoken. For Maeve & Ake they connect to someone they were programmed to love, in such a way that it has become real love. For Delores she seems to have embraced the Wyatt character and is hellbent on bringing her wrath onto the world. The sweet rancher’s daughter was there, but the persona of the murderous Wyatt seems to have won out. I’m not sure why or how that all works, but it doesn’t seem to be extremely consistent.

I’ve been a little down on Westworld the last couple episodes. I’d say “Kiksuya” was a really great episode, and it got me back on board with the mythology of the show. I really can’t wait to find out what happens at the end of this season, but I am also tempering my expectations for a satisfying ending. With only two episodes left I really don’t know what we are going to get.

Westworld S2E06 - Phase Space

I failed my mission to post about every single episode of season 2 of Westworld. I was traveling for work and watched most of last week’s “Akane no Mai” sitting in an airport at 1am. I’m not sure if my negative impression of the episode was from the environment, or the fact that it was a complete side-track from the show we had been watching.

There were two main things we learned from the episode. Maeve was able to further her powers of control so that she didn’t even need to speak in order to make a host do whatever she wants. Delores turned Teddy into an aggressive murderous host that would do her bidding.

Season two has been building and getting better up through episode 4. Episode 5 was a strange one that didn’t fit in with the overall story very much. Episode 6 “Phase Space” was a regression for me. It felt like we were spinning our wheels. The season felt pretty tight and focused up to the last two episodes.

I didn’t like how Delores looks immediately regretful of creating evil Teddy, but he wasn’t doing anything that she wouldn’t have done a couple episodes ago. It feels like they are setting up a major betrayal that will lead to Teddy dead in the water. I just don’t think the storytelling has been very well done up to this point.

I keep waiting for the Maeve storyline to connect with me. I’ve tried to stay on board with the symbolism and meaning we are getting from Samuri World, but I am not sure how important it will be in the end. I hated out surprised Maeve was that “her daughter” had another mother at the homestead. What did she expect?!? Maeve is supposed to be smart. Didn’t she realize her robot daughter would have been programmed to love another? Maybe Maeve can use her powers of persuasion to bring the daughter back to her side.

I also feel conflicted about “the cradle”. This is a concept that we had no idea about before this episode. It is a game changer that allows them to do so many tricks with time and reality. It explains how Ford has still been able to have control over things, but it also feels unfair in some way. The introduction of this further-removed-from-reality copy of Westworld just seems like a bridge too far for my appreciation of the show. I’m not sure where I am willing to draw those lines, but it just does’t feel fair.

I do like the concept of Delores running the fidelity tests on Bernard/Arnold in the cradle. I am not how that came about or where that is going to go, but I feel like when Bernard disconnects from “the matrix” he is going to have an Arnold concisoness in his mind egg.

Anthony Hopkins playing Ford was my favorite thing about Westworld season 1. I enjoyed his philosophical ramblings. I feel his absence in this season. They need something to make the show feel more profound. Nobody else in the cast has been able to step into that role that Hopkins filled last year. I am excited to see him back. I don’t know how much of a role he will play in the rest of the season. Presumably “the cradle” gets destroyed somewhere in the next 4 episodes. I imagine it will play a big role in the next couple episodes anyway. Hopefully we get some of the Hopkins magic.

I think the last 3 episodes were the strongest of Westworld season 1. I am hoping for the same strong ending in season 2 as well.