Today I learned:

1. Covering my butt:  I spend alot of my day preaching transparency, open communication, and the need to nurture trusting relationships. Simultaneously I save just about every incoming and outgoing email, and am I required to call on my stash all too often to cover my butt. I don’t like it, and never have. Today I learned I still need my stash and I have not figured out how to kill the endless loop. If only we could all delete them and start actually talking instead of documenting.

This gives me an idea: Would it be possible to go one single day at work without sending an internal email?  A worthy experiment for next week maybe…

2. First thing in the morning: On Seth’s Blog yesterday there is a post about the first thing when we sit at the computer in the morning. Essentially the question is this: Do you consume or do you create?

This got me thinking about a simple change I made a few months ago and how it is truly working. I setup my Outlook to open to a folder I labelled as Priority Inbox which holds those items that I decide are critical for the day ahead. Before I leave at night I make sure my Priority Inbox holds the key tasks for tomorrow and, most importantly, absolutely nothing else. That way when I sit down the first thing I see is what I need to see, and not what other people might want me to see.  Seth’s Blog help remind me that this little trick is working like a charm.

(Note: I don’t use task lists – I email myself things that need to be done, calls to return etc. If it is important enough, then those “tasks” are in my Priority Inbox, along with everything else.)