Cutting off email access to get things done
Past Hawk Wings posts have talked about how spending less time with your email can lead to getting more things done (“Addicted to Email? Dr Tom has the cure“, “Emailing to live, not living to email“, “Inbox Zero: Slash and Burn at 43 Folders“).
In the end, they all depend on willpower.
A poster on macOSXHints has come up with the answer 
for people without willpower — using a timer switch to cut off internet access for some portion of the day.
He suggests a couple of set-up to cut off varying degrees of connectivity.
Another poster notes in the comments that the new Airport Extreme allows for a child protection option that also cuts connectivity off for a set period. A bonus for the inner child in us all.
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Tags: addiction, Apple Mail, email, getting things done, gtd, Internet, mail.app, Productivity, tough love
January 15th, 2007 at 7:27 am
Another way to spend less time on email is to get frustrated with font translation problems in Rich Text emails. However, this could have the opposite effect, as it did with me: you spend more time sending/receiving test emails to try to sort out the problem!
The problem: I (Apple Mail) correspond regularly with friends Bill (Outlook/Windows) and Bob (The Bat; ThunderBird/Windows). Each sees the others’ fonts differently: different sizes, and translated to different fonts, even when we all have the same fonts installed.
e.g. an email I send in Verdana 12 will be seen as Tahoma 11 in The Bat, and something different in Outlook and Thunderbird. Bill sends me a mail in Calibri (OK…I don’t think I have Calibri) 11 pt, and I see it as Verdana 15 pt. Bill then sends me a mail in Verdana and Apple Mail will see it as Verdana but will resize it upwards by 3-4 points.
Tim: you have an easy answer to this: eschew Rich Text emails. :-)
Steve
January 15th, 2007 at 8:12 am
Hehehe… Yes, I think, in this case, that plain text is a very happy marriage of ideological conviction and practical reality. :)
January 15th, 2007 at 8:32 am
OK Tim…time for a post from you on this issue:
*Why rich text emails have mistranslation of font issues
*The pros and cons of rich text vs plain text emails
* Your plain text ideology
Crafting this post, and dealing with all the comments, should take all your spare time for the next few months… :-)
January 18th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Another way is to set mail to automatically fetch e-mails every hour rather thann every minute…
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:50 am
Every task I email leads me to getting things done. I use Wrike. This article might be interesting for you http://www.wrike.com/blog/7/10/2007/Wrike_helps_you_get_things_done> guide though GTD