Taming Twitter and Email

Posted by  chandni —April 24, 2009
Filed in Collaboration

Technology can be your best friend or your worst enemy. The two technologies I’ve managed to turn back into friendly allies are email and Twitter. Until recently I had my email and Twitter open all day. As a result I was being interrupted (and quite frankly would interrupt myself) checking email and Twitter and posting messages. My productivity was going down the toilet.
I think it’s useful to have an analogy to explain how to use a technology. I think of Twitter as like my virtual tea room or cafe. It’s the place I go to hear the chatter about what’s happening. I will tend to sit down with some friends (using Tweetdeck) while also looking forward to meeting someone new. I’ll share some ideas and resources and ask people for their help, experiences and opinions.
The problem was that I was in cafe (socializing) mode all day long when I should have enjoyed this social space like I use to when I worked in an organisation, at 10.30am and 3.30pm.
So my new regime has been to only participate in Twitter at 10.30 and 3.30 (for about 30 minutes at a time) and in times when I’ve decided I’m going to just have some fun (evenings, weekends). This doesn’t mean that I’m going full pelt at Twitter in each session. It just means I have a read and participate during these times.
And the same rule applies to email with one variation. I’ll send emails and read emails throughout the day as part of getting things done, but I wont retrieve new emails except at 10.30 and 3.30.
As a result of this new approach to productivity I spend more time in my task manager (OmniFocus) picking off the next task and knocking it off.

About  chandni

Comments

  1. Luke Grange says:

    Now this is very interesting Chadni. I look forward to hearing how this time management and Social Networking management works out for you. Please do keep me posted. I am rubbish at it.

  2. Jon Buscall says:

    I think this is an important point to make. I try and dip into Twitter too instead of inhabiting it all day.
    As someone who works from my computer most of the time it’s important to have social interaction and Twitter is a virtual outlet for that. But I have to plan it otherwise my productivity sinks.

  3. KerrieAnne says:

    I found it best to rss the feeds from my favourite people on twitter – which included @unorder … then read in googlereader and tag with metadata .. then quickly skim through other posts when log into twitter twice a day

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