Tips on managing high volume emails (Part 2)

In the previous post I touched on some the technology behind how I manage my email. In this post I'll take a look at some of the software and my workflow.

What you have to realise, is that keeping on top of your email does not necessarily mean answering every email as it arrives, or even answering all your email within a couple of hours or even days.

Keeping on top of your email is to process it effectively so that you are in control and able to cope.

This is one of the main themes of the "Getting Things Done" methodology. I'm not a GTD expert and would suggest that you check out many of the resources available on the web. Just google "GTD" or checkout Merlin Manns 43 Folders site. Basically, the approach I take is to process my inbox using the following principles:

• Delete the email if I don't need to action or keep for reference
  
  
• Action the email if I can do it in less than a few minutes and file/delete it
  
  
• Defer the email for a later time if I need to think or its going to take me longer than a few minutes to respond, but remove it from the inbox to a trusted system
  
  
• Delegate the email if some else can handle it
  
  
• Archive the email for reference

The overall aim is to clear out your inbox so that only new emails are viewable. The inbox should not be your to do list or your filing system

So with that in mind, here are some of the tools that I use:

Apples Mail Client - This is the main email client that I use. Primarily due to its rules engine, smart mailboxes, support for IMAP and lots of third party tools available that integrate with Apple Mail.

Note that the Apple Mail application can be used with many different mail systems, not just MobileMe mail. You can use it with Google mail (both IMAP and POP), your ISPs email system, basically most third party email systems based on POP or IMAP.

Mail Act-On - Link - This is a fantastic tool to help you process your emails. It allows you to apply rules to emails based on keyboard shortcuts. It's so difficult to create completely automated rules for every eventuality.

Invariably, you will need to manually process emails but once you've had chance to review and/or action them, there is usually some common action you need to do to the email. It could be file it within your email folders, add tags (see later), colour the email, reply or forward the email even run an Applescript based on the email. Mail-Acton allows you to create specific rules with associated keystrokes.

It's amazing how much muscle memory you can develop within a short period of time.

So if I read an email and there is no action and I want to move it to my archive mailbox, I just hit CTRL and A and it's gone.

If I read a mail and it's related to a specific project, I just hit CTRL and P and the mail is moved to my Archive mailbox and the special tag I've setup is attached to the email so I can search for it later or even create a Smart Mailbox to view all the related emails in one place.

Mail Act-On is probably top of my list for speeding up my email processing. I have covered Mail Act-On in a previous ScreenCastsOnline show - SCO0176 - Organise Your Email - Mail Act-On v2

More applications in part 3!

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Tips on managing high volume emails (Part 1)

I get a lot of emails, a lot!

In order to keep my sanity (and to run my business efficiently), it's pretty essential to keep on top of of your email, especially when running a service related business. This has two benefits:

• Firstly, people are really amazed if they receive a response to an email in a timely fashion. I can usually respond to an email within a couple of hours, even a couple of minutes in some cases. This sets you apart immediately as someone who is efficient and on top of things - a real boon.
  
  
• Secondly, it gives you peace of mind and can de-stress you. It's only one element in a number of things, but knowing you've on top of your email and might have even reached the holy grail of "Inbox Zero", it certainly gives you a lift.

So this post is just a brief summary of some of the things I do to keep on top of my emails.

I'll split it into several parts so I don't spend all morning writing this blog post! In this first part, I'll look at some of the mechanisms that I use, in future posts, I'll cover some of the applications.

Single InBox - All my emails from legacy systems and Gmail are all forwarded to a single MobileMe mail account. This allows me to see all emails in a single place and I don't need to keep switching email accounts. It also allows me to see all my email from anywhere in a single mailbox on my iPhone.

iPhone Triage - I've heard a lot of people complaining about accessing emails on the iPhone. I've never had an issue and find it's a tremendous tool for triaging your email. You can quickly scan and read through new emails in your inbox. If an email doesn't need a response, it's really simple to move the email from the inbox into an Archive mailbox with a few simple clicks. Read it, file it, just get it out of the inbox. If it does need a response, I tend to leave it in the inbox, and respond when I get back to my desk or the laptop.

IMAP - Apples MobileMe is an IMAP mail system in that all the emails are stored on the server and are accessible via my iPhone, the web, my laptop or my desktop. If I read an email on one machine, those changes are replicated back to the server and if I move to another machine, the email shows as read on that machine.

Apple Mail Rules - Rules are a fantastic way to handle email automatically. I've a number of rules set up based on various parameters such as the senders email addresses, words contained in the subject, all sort of things. The rules are implemented to process email that doesn't need a direct response and move it out of the inbox. The rules can either move the emails to specific mailboxes or more recently I've been starting to tag emails. With having a MobileMe account, all my rules are replicated across all my desktop machines.

24 Hour Processing - Because I rely on automated rules (plus additional spam filtering) to keep my inbox fairly clean and only have emails that need to be read or actioned, it's useful to keep the rules running 24 hours a day. The issue is that the rules engine runs locally on the desktop machines, not centrally on the MobileMe server. To get around this I've taken a fairly "non green" approach by ensuring one of my desktop machines are running 24 hours a day. Consequently, if I'm out and about, and check my email via the iPhone, I see only emails that need to be seen in my inbox. Non urgent or informational emails are archived by the rules engine back at base. And because it's IMAP based, all email clients see the changes!

I'll do another post tomorrow on some of the other tools and techniques I use to keep on top of my email.

PS By the way, I'm no productivity expert so be gentle with me, after all, I'm no Merlin Mann :-)

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Blogging about blogging....

Well into my second week of trying to write a post a day for 30 days and I have to say that the response has been great. Excuse this post as blogging about blogging, but I need to keep it short today - production day don't you know!

A number of the posts seem to have generated a lot of useful discussion and I've been posting a link to my twitter account each time I post. Much as I used to hate this approach, I have a gut feeling that this has generated a lot of traffic to the blog. There is probably some scientific way to gauge how many people come across via Twitter and how many via RSS but perhaps I'll look into it some other day!

The combination of trying to keep on top of emails and write a blog post everyday can be a huge time sink. A couple of the days have seen me working until 11am just on these alone so I'll need to apply a bit more discipline in keeping the blog posts short and to the point.

Just like this one :-)

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The Dirty Deed is Done......

Amazing how quickly things move on......

You'll have read all about my inner turmoil yesterday, being tempted by the new Mac Pro and the realisation that my plans for a new development machine based on a new Mac mini had to be put on hold whilst I considered using an iMac as an alternative.

I'm fortunate to already have a Mac Pro, one of the 8 cores introduced in Jan 2008, which is my main desktop machine and video production workstation. I wanted a second Mac to both act as a Snow Leopard test bed and also as a potential dedicated screencapture workstation.

I'd figured on getting a Mac mini for this, but the price differential between the maxed out Mac mini and the iMac was a mere £350 to get a much more capable machine plus a 24" glossy screen.

Well, I was happily working away yesterday afternoon, with one eye on my Twitter feed as normal, when I spotted a tweet from @leanda with the news that she'd just had a great offer on the now "end of line" Mac Pro from her local Apple store. A significant discount off the usual price of a Xeon Quad Core 2.8Ghz Mac Pro - £400 off in fact!

Hmm, now that's a development machine.

Curious, I rang my local Apple store and lo and behold, they also had a couple of the same machines with the same discount (for business customers).

The bottom line was that could get a Xeon Quad Core 2.8Ghz Mac Pro with 2GB RAM for just under the price of a new 24" iMac. In all honesty, I didn't really need the display on the iMac, and with the Mac Pro, I'd have the ultimate in flexibility and more than enough raw computing power for a long time to come. Besides which, if I had a second 8 core Mac Pro, I could combine both machines at encoding time using Virtual Clusters in Compressor and all 16 cores should be utilised to the max, reducing my current video encoding times by half.

Now my current Mac Pro is currently configured with 10GB RAM and potential "other' Mac Pro has only 2GB. Apple memory is out of the question but a quick search at OWC showed I could upgrade both machines to 16GB RAM for approx £400 including shipping. A quick trawl at ebuyer showed 4 x 1TB drives would set me back another £280.

So in effect, I'd be getting an Xeon Quad Core 2.8Ghz Mac Pro with 16GB RAM and 4TB disk (and upgrading my current Mac Pro to 16GB RAM in the process) for approximately £600 less than buying a base model of the new Mac Pro.

Bargain!

So yes, I scuttled off to my local Apple store and did the dirty deed!

So now I'm the owner of two "End of LIne" Mac Pros with more horsepower that I ever dreamed possible. I've not set up the other beast yet as I'm waiting on the other bits to arrive.

One thing I'm going to test out is "teaming" the dual gigabit ethernet ports on each machine using link aggregation

Link aggregation allows you to aggregate or combine multiple physical links that connect your Mac to a link aggregation device (a switch or another Mac) into a single logical link. The result is a fault-tolerant link with a bandwidth equal to the sum of the bandwidths of the physical links.

In effect, this would give each machine a huge fat fast pipe between each other which again, should speed up the video encoding and enable me to pass the huge video files I create between each machine with ease. I need to do some more research on this as I think you need a special type of gigabit switch, but I'll keep you informed!

I'm also seriously considering setting one of the machines up as just a dedicated video production machine, optimised for video production and not to be fiddled with or experimented with.

So that's the end of my justification to myself reasoning behind what some people may think as crazyness (looking at you Allison) but it really is a business tool. I spend countless hours in front of my rig editing and encoding, so it's an investment in technology to help smooth out the process and also another learning experience to share.

With GrandCentral in Snow Leopard, I'm fully expecting more and more applications to become multi processor aware, so over time it's not just the video encoding side that will benefit.

Finally, it's always good to remember when investing in Mac kit, just how long the kit both lasts and is supported. I fully expect these machines to be earning their keep for many years, not just for me. The resale value of Macs is significant, so when the time does come to upgrade to the next level, both machines should still attract a pretty decent price, recouping a significant amount of the initial investment.

If I can ever bring myself to part with them!

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Another 24 hours.....

So the announcements are out with updates across the board on the desktop range.

I have to say that the Mac minis and iMacs were expected but I did think the Mac Pro updates whould be held back until perhaps WWDC.

So my thoughts....mixed and somewhat confused.

I need to spend a bit more thinking time before I decide what (or if) to upgrade to following the announcements, but I'll try and get down some initial thoughs.

Updated Mac Pro

I never even considered a new Mac Pro being announced, so this did come out of the blue. Had I known Leo had ordered one the weekend before, I would have had a better idea! I already have one of the original 2.8Ghz 2 x Quad Xeon models launched 14 months ago.

It's done me sterling service and is a pretty quick machine especially when video encoding.

I found the information for the new Mac Pro to be a little confusing, especially with the entry level 8 core machine now using the new "Nehalem" processors but only at 2.26Ghz. The optional faster processors added significantly to the price (2.66 GHz = $1400 and 2.93Ghz = $2600) Ouch!

Now I realise that you can't compare just the clock speed of the new processors compared to the old, as there are extras in the new machines such as its single-die, 64 bit architecture, integrated memory controller for reduced latency, increased memory bandwidth, Turbo boost mode, hyper threading and a whole host of new fangled technologies. But it's really difficult to assess the real life performance benefits of these new machines compared to my existing machine.

All the performance tests on the Apple site compare either a Power Mac G5 Quad or a Mac Pro 3.2 Ghz machine with a top of the range new Mac Pro (a 2.93Ghz machine - the one with the $2600 price premium). So really, I'm left clueless is there is any benefit in even thinking of upgrading.

Of course, I could always get a new Mac Pro and keep the old one and setup a Virtual cluster for my video encoding. Have all 16 cores bashing away at an encoding job!

Updated Mac mini

Apple don't want normal people or switchers to buy a Mac mini.

They just don't!

They want normal people or switchers to buy an iMac instead.

I mentioned in my previous blog post that I hoped Apple would price the Mac mini aggressively to give more people the opportunity to get into Macs.

They didn't! They did however price the iMacs very aggressively, but more on that later.

What they did do though was to make a statement showing that Apple are just not interested in building a cheap computer.

They want to remain a premium brand.

The Mac mini is a bit of a strange addition to the Apple line up now but I think the intention is for it to be a niche machine. It's the Mac that fits the bill where more traditional Macs don't. It's the Mac for using as a high powered media center, it's for using as a simple OSX server, it's for using as a dedicated keynote presentation installation (note the ability to run two displays), it's for installing in your car, it's for hooking up Firewire peripherals in your home studio.

It's everything but a cheap computer and only intended for those who have a specialist need.

Of course, there are people who will still switch over to the Mac using the Mac mIni but they won't be price sensitive.

My original plan before the announcement was to get two Mac minis, one as a Media Center and the other as a development/test machine to familiarise myself with Snow Leopard and potentially even set up to dual boot and use as my screencast capturing machine.

Media Center Mac Mini
Still on rack although more expensive than I had hoped. The form factor and quiet running of the Mac mini makes it ideal for the job. Add in the enhanced graphics capabilities and the 802.11n networking (although I will run it wired)

Low End Model: 2.0Ghz, 2GB RAM, 120GB HD = £538.99

Pretty expensive really, don't you think! I've gone with an extra 1GB RAM but no other extras

Development Machine Mac mini
Well I need it fairly beefy so lets go for the higher end model and add some extras in:

High End Model: 2.26Ghz, 4GB RAM, 320GB HD = £849.01

Excuse me! That's with the highest processor spec and an extra 2GB RAM. Don't forget, that is just the base unit - no keyboard, mouse or monitor

OK, so how much would an iMac be with similar configuration:

20" iMac: 2.66Ghz, 4GB RAM, 320GB HD = £1029.01

So for another £180 you get a faster processor, a 20" monitor, video camera, speakers, microphone, keyboard and Mouse!

24" iMac: 2.66Ghz, 4GB RAM, 640GB HD = £1199.00

So for another £349.99 you get a faster processor, a glorious 24" monitor, video camera, speakers, microphone, keyboard and Mouse!

I think for the extra £350, my development machine would most likely be an iMac!

Updated iMac

Apple really do want to push the iMac as a premium desktop machine but at a relatively affordable price.

Still miles away from the bargain basement machines but the iMacs exude quality. The inclusion of the 24" display as pretty much the standard now (three of the four machines in the range now have 24" monitors) is a bit of a surprise but everyone I know who has seen the 24" wants one!

Other updates including hard disk and memory bumps are a good move by Apple.

Decision Time

Not as cut and dry as I would hope, so it seems I need to spend some more time thinking on what I really need and what is the most cost effective way to achieve it.

In some respects, I'm hampered by having an Apple Developer Connection discount available - which is nice! This is a discount you get towards development hardware each year if you're a member of the ADC. The only problem is it can only be applied to a single order each year, so if I'm making any major purchases, it makes sense to roll them up into a single order.¹

At this rate, it looks like I'll be waiting until after the 24th March to see if Apple do hold a special event and anything comes out of left field. Mind you, that will also give me plenty of time to assess just what benefits the revised Mac Pro delivers in the real world, once early adopters start receiving them and putting them through their paces.

You never know, Apple may even release an Apple TV take 3 so removing the need for me to buy the Media Centre Mac mini.

You never know!

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1. Thanks to Paul Shadwell for a correction on this point. Looks like the level of ADC membership I have only allows for a single system to be purchased under the terms of the ADC discount - ho hum! At least that in some way makes it easier to decide in a perverse sort of way - Thanks again Paul?

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