Thing 6: Communication Tools

Awful lot of reading to this one. (Imagine that!)

Once I figured out what pr0n means I was able to soldier on with this section.

43 Folders wasted an awful lot of time being clever, "pouring a 40" for himself. I learned some slang terms, but if Merlin Mann was really interested in productivity he could have said everything he needed to say in a paragraph or less.

Looking around 43 Folders there is actually good advice here. For instance the "Procrastination hack" is a technique I discovered on my own and works pretty well (of course I often put off using it). Maybe I will bookmark this site and probe it once in awhile.

Email is sort of the "grand old person" of communication. It makes a good bulletin board to get the general issues of the day as well as specific interchanges with folks. It's also a good way to keep a record if one ever needs explain the genesis of an idea or controversy. I've heard IM espoused as a good way to keep some things "off the record" but since the services I'm aware of seem to keep records of the conversation I think I'll stay wary of that usage. I would say that email increases productivity since most messages are to the point and devoid of social chat that are inevitable over the phone or face-to-face. I'm not sure that IM works the same way.

I use many email services and my biggest gripe is that once I've invested in one by saving emails to folders and by giving my address to people it becomes very difficult to leave that service if I ever become dissatisfied with it (I'm talking about you, Hotmail). The thought of downloading 8 years of saved messages one at a time and informing everyone I write to from the account that I'm moving is (so far) more daunting than the aggravation of putting up with their so-called improvements. The solution could be using Outlook or Thunderbird to download and store emails on my computer, but that seems so 20th Century.

We're still trying to get an IM group together. The main problems is that the services we've tried don't have an obvious way to inform someone intent on some other aspect of their job that a new message has arrived, and in having people online when you need to communicate with them. (Well, and having something to useful to say besides lol.) It should be useful for exchanging information that normally goes through email, and it could be useful for the downstairs to communicate with the upstairs (say with IS about a computer problem), but like the phone it depends on the person you're communicating with being at their desk, so why not just use the phone? Ditto for texting.

I'm still looking into web conferencing. I signed up with WebJunction Learning Webinars. It looks useful but it's hard to find the time to take advantage of it and I'm too exhausted right now to take Thing 6 any further.