Curtis called me last week full of news about a great meeting he’d had. We had an opportunity to pitch for some really interesting work together with some people in Brighton we like and respect.
Only thing was we needed to write the pitch for Monday. It was Thursday afternoon but we had both done our four days for PWD and we had busy plans for Friday. Plus I was off to Germany in the snow to see my mother, lonely and worried with her partner recovering from a major operation in hospital. I wasn’t due back until mid afternoon on Monday.
My daily scaffold consists of:
Coffee – grinding beans, making espresso, steaming milk – very nice process, good thinking time. Sometimes Radio 4 is on in the background.
Review calendar, the hard landscape, the stuff that I have to do today or at a time today.
Do some work, project stuff – not emails.
I try to put off looking at emails until I’ve done at least an hour’s work.
I then have little bits of time throughout the day for checking my emails and my action folder in my emails.
With emails I:
Scan the inbox for trash, junk and bacon (social/newsletters/stuff I’d like to read but not essential) – I move them to the relevant folders.
I scan the inbox for any very quick to respond to emails – and send responses (trying hard to use these guidelines - http://emailcharter.org/ )
What’s normally left are emails that are going to require more in depth responses, or some project work – 2 ways of dealing with these – first, move them all to your action folder, get them out of inbox – next, book some time in to deal with them as a batch, or put time in for particular emails.
It’s not like this everyday, but, I try as much as possible to keep to this routine.
