Nokomis Day Eight

a challenging and frustrating day

Day eight saw us cruising from Peterborough back to Fotheringhay; a distance of 19 miles and 7 locks that took just on seven hours.

The day was challenging because of the weather. Although the rain had, largely, gone; it was extremely windy. Most of the time this wasn’t a problem, but it did make access into and out of locks tricky. This was exacerbated by the reason the day was also frustrating. Some anti-social boater has preceded us up the river and failed to reset the locks!

A digression on locks on the Nene

The Nene has locks that are different to those on canals; though they are common on other East Anglian waterways. Canal locks tend to have Vee gates at each end. Most locks on the Nene have a Vee gate at the upstream end, but a vertical guillotine gate at the downstream end. Why? No idea.

Unlike canal locks, which can be left in pretty much any state, there is a strict protocol to be followed with the Nene locks: irrespective of your direction of travel, the lock is always left with the guillotine raised. I believe this is so that the Vee gates take the bulk of the water pressure, other than when the lock is actually in use.

When travelling downstream this means that one has to moor up, lower the guillotine, flood the lock, open the Vee gates, motor in, close the Vee gates, empty the lock, raise the guillotine and drive out. Going upstream you motor in, lower the guillotine, flood the lock, open the Vee gates, motor out, moor up, close the Vee gates, empty the lock, raise the guillotine and then motor off.

Because some a-hole had merely motored in, lowered the guillotine, flooded the lock, opened the Vee gates and then motored off; it meant that we had to moor up, close the Vee gates, empty the lock and raise the guillotine before we could motor in. It may not sound like much more effort, but given that some of the locks have manually operated guillotines with enormous wheels to spin, it fair wears one out. It also added five minutes to the average 15 it takes to transit a lock.

Nonetheless, we got to Fotheringhay about 5 PM and moored in pretty much the same spot as we used on the way down. The weather was deteriorating and we’d already been peed upon once, so we decided to stay on board rather than sally forth to The Falcon.

Nokomis Days six and seven

Once again, I have consolidated two days into one as they are both related to being in Peterborough.

Peterborough isn’t really a vacation destination for us; after all, it’s only 45 minutes up the road. That said, we’ve never spent any time there. Generally, we are either shopping or pub crawling 🙂 Thus, this was an opportunity to spend more time visiting. Sadly, it was not to be.

Getting into Peterborough was easy enough. We were only five miles and one lock from the moorings by the Town Bridge, so we were there by midday. Unfortunately, the weather was pretty grim. Whilst we didn’t actually get wet during the voyage, we certainly did once we were there.

Inevitably, we needed to stock up on provisions, so our first stop was Asda. Our main reason for speeding to Peterborough was a dinner date with Nokomis’s rightful occupants, so we then needed to tidy Nokomis up a bit before they arrived. After all that, and what with the weather, we didn’t actually get to do much. Oh, we did manage to visit The Brewery Tap and The Palmerston Arms, but that’s not really touristy stuff; that’s CAMRA beer tasting business 🙂

The Palmerston Arms used to be one of the best pubs in Peterborough. It’s a Bateman’s pub but has a very open licence so it sells a wide variety of ales, ciders and (in theory) perries. Varina is a cider and perry drinker and was building up a thirst for a nice fruity perry. Unfortunately, there were none on. The beer was OK, but noting special.

For dinner, we went to The Grain Barge, which was only 100m upstream from where we were moored: definitely staggering distance. We had a very good meal and excellent service.

Sunday’s weather was even worse, so we needed something primarily indoors to do. I discovered that the Nene Valley Railway were holding a Steam Gala over the weekend, so we decided to go there. We spent a very enjoyable few hours trundling back and forth on the line in different types of rolling stock and fortified by Nene Valleys own NVR beer!

Nokomis Days Four and Five

Thrapston to Fotheringhay. 15 miles, 3 locks and Fotheringhay to Ferry Meadows. 15 miles, 6 locks

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Day Four

Day four saw us travelling from Thrapston to Fotheringhay; a distance of 15 miles and eight locks. It took us about six hours.

We travelled further because we want to sure of being at Peterborough by Saturday so we can meet up with Paul and Ron for dinner. This meant cruising at a faster rate, which in turn meant us burning more oil. The engine in Nokomis is a three cylinder Lister two stroke diesel and it’s quite old. Consequently, it burns quite of lot of oil when it is pushed. The give away is the 100 litre drum of oil in the Cratch!

The scenery is varied through this part of the Nene. Mostly, the river meanders along its course but there are stretches where it passes through limestone breaches. It’s mostly wooded and we saw lots of wildlife: swans in abundance, ducks, kingfishers, herons, thousands of dragonflies, etc.

Although the weather was cool and cloudy in the morning, it brightened up to be a sunny and warm afternoon. But the time we reached Fotheringhay, we were in tee shirts.

Fotheringhay is best known as the site of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, but it was also the birthplace of Richard III; Fotheringhay Castle being the home of his parents, Richard of York and his wife Cecily. The parents are both buried in the splendid church up on the hill. I have a soft spot for Richard III. I agree with others that his reputation was trashed by the Tudors, so I’m always interested to learn more about him.

The moorings are below the church and just upstream of the bridge. They’re private, and there is a small fee, but they are perfectly sited. Hopefully, the pictures do it justice.

We ate at The Falcon Inn, the Falcon being the family crest of the York family. It’s a well recommended Gastropub and we had good beer and an excellent meal. I’ll do a Tripadvisor review when we get back, and it will be good.

Day Five

Day five saw us proceed from Fotheringhay to Ferry Meadows on the outskirts of Peterborough. This is a distance of 15 miles with six locks. It took us about six hours.

Another long cruise but we ended up only four miles from Peterborough. We could have carried on the Peterborough itself, but we wanted to stay at Ferry Meadows.

The moorings are in Overton Lake, one of the three sand and gravel pits that make up the park. We moored against pontoons just by the Visitor Centre and were immediately mobbed by dozens of squawking ducks and geese who are obviously used to being fed.

The weather was ok when we arrived but was going downhill all the time. We went for a walk around the park and got back just before it started to rain, hard!

Despite this, we ventured out to the local pub, a Beefeater, and had dinner.

Nokomis days two and three

There’s not a lot to say about day two. We stayed moored up at Wellingborough Embankment and took a walk into Wellingborough.

The weather was not very nice so we spent most of the time in a truly excellent pub: the Coach and Horses in Oxford Street. 10+ beers, 9 (I think) ciders, knowledgable staff and great music meant that we were very happy.

After spending a quiet night at Wellingborough, we proceeded down the river as far as Irthlingborough. Our initial plan had been to stop at Irtlingborough for lunch and then carry on to Thrapston, but we were delayed getting away in the morning and decided to stay on at Irthlingborough after lunch.

Wellingborough embankment is known for its swans. There were nearly 20 of them plus dozens of ducks. Somebody came along and started to feed them bread and they went wild. On top of this there was one male that was intent on reinforcing his dominance by harassing loads of other males. All very amusing.

Wellingborough to Irthlingborough is just over four miles and three locks. Two are traditional with pointed gates top and bottom. The other has a radial bottom gate: a bit like the Thames Barrier. Varina handled them like a professional.

When we arrived at Irtlingborough, we were the only boat on the mooring, but more of that later.

The moorings are right by what was the ground of Rushden and Diamonds AFC. I say was, because they went out of business in 2011. The ground is now home to Kettering Town FC. The irony is that Kettering used to be Rushden and Diamonds’ closest rivals.

The site also used to be the home of the Dr Martens’ factory shop. This too has now gone as Dr Martens’ footwear is now made in China!

We moored up and had lunch and then made the decision to stay on. The weather was deteriorating and the time it would take to reach Thapston meant that we would be in trouble if there were no free moorings: Nakomis not having any navigation lights and me not wanting to sail at night anyway.

Having made the decision, we headed off into Irthlingborough to do some shopping and have a nosy. The latter didn’t take long as there isn’t a lot to see. There is a very interesting looking church, but there was a service going on and we didn’t want to interrupt proceedings.

Thus we headed back, had a couple of drinks and then I cooked up a splendid chicken curry. I also set my radio up and made a few contacts on 40m before the battery on my FT-817 dropped below the point where it would produce a decent signal.

I was amazed at how quiet 40m was. At home it’s a nightmare, with over S9 QRN. I contacted stations in Donegal and Berlin as well as a couple in the UK. I must operate away from home more often.

As the evening closed in, the moorings filled up until there was no space at the inn. One boat even arrived after dark and gave us a start as its headlight appeared alongside. I’m glad we decided to stop when we did.

It’s nice and quiet here: just the sound of cows munching grass on the other bank 🙂

Tomorrow, we’ll head down to Thrapston.

Automatic software updates can seriously damage your health

In this post, I’ll tell you the tale of how a software update nearly caused me serious damage, and why. I’ll also show you why you probably shouldn’t be one of Pavlov’s creatures and accept updates to mobile apps automatically.

Evernote is a great product

Since I first found it some years ago (I first registered back in 2008), Evernote has been an integral part of my daily workflow. I use it for just about everything related to the capture, generation and distribution of text.

I use Evernote to capture multi-media notes on multiple devices and and keep them in sync. I maintain a complex hierarchy of notebooks for all sorts of purposes. I have separate notebooks for each client and each project I’m working on.

I also have more notebooks for specific workflows such as writing blog posts. This one started as a collection of notes, before morphing into a Markdown document that can be uploaded to my WordPress blog.

I also maintain a complex hierarchy of Tags and make extensive use of smart searches. All in all, Evernote is one of my core productivity tools. All told, I’ve got thousands of notes in dozens of notebooks.

Evernote’s update policy

Being one of the new generation of Internet software companies, Evernote updates its products on a frequent but irregular basis. This never used to worry me. It does now.

The Problem

Evernote recently made a major change to the Mac client

As far as I was aware, there was no warning that this was going to happen. There was a “A new version of Evernote is available” alert, and yes it did give details of the changes, but I get loads of them, and anyway, who has time to read that stuff?

Again, as far as I am aware, there was no opportunity to evaluate the new release before installing it. No beta. So, my Pavlovian reflexes kicked in and I installed the update. I instantly regretted it.

The new UI was radically different in a number of areas and my carefully constructed workflows were totally disrupted. It pulverised my productivity.

Unfortunately, this happened at a moment when I was particularly busy and just didn’t have the time, or the inclination, to learn a new UI.

Luckily, I was able to revert to the earlier version. The Mac is very easy in that respect. Rename the newly installed Application and drag the old one out of the Trash Can. Peasy.

Changes also made to iPad version

Now came another shock. At some point, the iPad version had been updated as well. I hadn’t used this for a while, so I’m not sure when it happened.
Unfortunately, there is (effectively) no potential to revert to a previous version on the iPad. You could do a device restore, but that’s OTT.

Luckily, the changes were not quite so dramatic and I was able to live with them.

Then the Penny dropped

The mobile “Apps” world is different

All this opened my eyes to a previously hidden consequence of using mobile apps: the user has lost control of the software upgrade process. Yes, I know you have to explicitly update apps from iTunes, but there are so many updates each week that it’s impossible to vet them all before applying them. You just have to trust the developer.

Software update and release processes have changed fundamentally. I’ll cover this in more detail in another blog but essentially, the old mantra of alpha releases, beta releases, community evaluation and then explicit upgrade; has changed.

Be more circumspect

I’ve been taught a lesson, and in this case it was not too painful. The learning points are:

Don’t upgrade Apps automatically
Watch for user community feedback before committing
- i.e. don’t be an early adopter if your business depends on it

It’s a restatement of a previous mantra “never install release the .0 of a newly updated software product: wait for .0.1 or a service pack” The problem is that you are now no longer always able to predict when the next .0 is coming out.

Summary

Treat updates to mobile apps with caution
If the app is critical, don’t upgrade automatically

Next Step

Like I said, this change to software release processes could expose a business to additional risk.

So, take a close look at your mobile app inventory and consider whether you should be blindly hitting the “Update” button.

Oh, and why not let me know if you’ve had a bad experience in this area. I promise I’ll be sympathetic.

Update September 2013

Since writing this post last December, I’ve now successfully migrated to the latest version of Evernote. I had a couple of days downtime and took the plunge. Now that I’ve got used to the changed UI, I like it. However, that doesn’t diminish the need to evaluate changes before committing to them.

Picture by By Roger W. Barbour [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Day one on Nokomis

Adventures on the river

For some time now, my brother in law’s friend has been suggesting that Varina and I take Nokomis away for a few days. Nokomis, named after Hiawatha’s grandmother, is a 49 foot narrow boat based on the River Nene near Wellingborough. It used to be a house boat but now sits idle for most of the time.

This year, we decided to take them up on the offer and plan to pootle down the river as far as Peterborough, visiting various places along the way.

Nokomis is moored at Wollaston lock, and after loading a mass of gear, food and booze, we got way about 1:30. The Nene is a lovely river, but public moorings are few and far between, so we opted to go only the short distance into Wellingborough on day one as we wanted to take a look round the town and visit a couple of pubs.

We only needed to navigate two locks on day one, Wollaston itself and Wellingborough Upper. The latter was interesting as there were two dead sheep floating in the entrance; one of which preceded us into the lock and got trapped behind one of the lower gates. This made the exit a bit tricky, particularly as it was stuck behind the port side gate and the ladder was also on that side. Varina was working the lock and had to hop aboard from that ladder.

No matter, we got to Wellingborough and moored up just after the bridge. We are on the bend, so only the stern is alongside, but that’s OK. We had been warned about the occasional pranks of the locals, mainly casting off boats in the middle of the night, so we are chained up as well.

After spending some time getting organised, we had a few drinks, a nice leisurely meal and played a few board games before having an early night. So far so good, until we were rudely awoken by one of the CO detectors going off. The boat is old and uses gas for heating water and cooling the fridge. The fridge is temperamental at the best of times and I put the problem down to that. We turned off all the gas, opened the windows and went back to sleep. Oh, we also removed the batteries from the detector. Bad boy!

As we awoke refreshed and alive, I assume we were OK. I know it’s probably not the best course of action, but I reasoned that the source was removed and the windows were open to clear any residue.

Unfortunately, the weather had taken a turn for the worse overnight and there was rain in the air. Ho hum.

Should lawyers use Dropbox to share documents with clients?

Legal services professional should not use Dropbox to share documents with clients because of the lack of access controls.

I won’t bother to introduce Dropbox. You’d need to have been living under a stone not to have heard about it by now. Suffice to say that it is probably the most popular Cloud Service for sharing documents between computers.

What I want to discuss is the suitability of Dropbox for one specific use case: sharing documents with clients. This applies to any professional, but I think is of particular applicability to anybody in a regulated industry.

Dropbox and the Legal Services industry

Much has been written about the general use of Dropbox and whether it can be used in the legal services industry and maintain compliance. In general, the jury is still out. A good analysis (from a US perspective) can be found on securityblawg.com. This concentrates on whether Dropbox can be used without jeopardising the tenets of Attorney-Client Privilege. A contrary view can be found in Snippets.

Sharing documents with clients

In this use case, one or other party places a document in a Dropbox folder that has been shared with the other party(s). All participants can now see the document and, crucially, can amend it.

This is the major flaw with Dropbox in a shared environment: It has no access controls. As the Dropbox website itself says:

Any member of the folder can add, delete, or edit files within that folder.
Source: Dropbox

Access Controls

Anybody operating in a corporate, shared, environment will be familiar with access controls on files. The owner of the file or folder can define the access rights of people and groups of people. Some have No Access, some have Read access only and some have Read/Write access. Some may be able to delete a document, others may not.

These are the basic requirements that have to be in place so that one can avoid the circumstances where one person (inadvertently) deletes or corrupts a document belonging to another person; possibly without even realising they did it.

A further requirement in most regulated environments is to be able to maintain an audit trail of who did what and when.

Dropbox supports none of these mechanisms.

The danger of using Dropbox

So, what could be the consequences of using Dropbox to share legally important documents like briefs, patent applications, arguments etc?

Supposing a client chose to share a proposed patent application with an agent using Dropbox. This is likely to be a Word document or something similar. Given that Dropbox has no access controls, there is nothing to catch the occasion when the agent inadvertently makes a change to the document and saves it back.

What if that change subtly altered the intent and meaning of the document?
What if the change meant that the application failed?

It’s not hard to think of similar situations in other fields where the detail of a document is of crucial importance.

In Summary

In other posts, I’ll discuss ways in which documents can be shared securely and the need to control access and maintain an immutable audit trial can be met. In the meantime, think very carefully before you use Dropbox to share that document with somebody outside of your organisation.

Backup needs to be done properly if your business is to survive

You may backup your data, but are you doing it properly and how do you know your backups are actually working?

In this post I’ll cover some of the most common reasons why backups are needed; why you should perform the occasional test restore to increase confidence in your backups; and I’ll mention a business class backup product that covers all the bases.

Why do you backup your data?

Most (I hope) businesses use some form of backup software to protect their data, but do you know why you do it? Also, how do you know it’s actually doing the job? These are questions that are often overlooked when companies implement a backup system. They may backup locally to disk or to tape; or they may use some form of off-site backup such as a cloud service.

So why do you backup your data?
This may seem like a silly question, but it’s surprising how often businesses back up their data without knowing why. Not knowing the answer can mean they choose the wrong approach and risk being unhappy with the final result.

Ultimately, businesses back up their data so they can restore it in the event of some disaster.

Within that broad definition however, lie a number of types of disaster: each of which may require a different approach. Some examples should illustrate the differences:

I’ve accidentally deleted a file

Probably the most common disaster, but even here their are two sub-types. Did you realise you’d deleted it straight away, or did you only realise some time later?

In the former case, you’ll probably be able to recover the deleted file from your Wastebasket/Trash Can (if it was stored locally) or from the network’s equivalent. If not, the you need fast access to a recent backup. How quickly can you restore a deleted file?

If you only become aware of the deletion some time later, your chances of recovering the file depend on how long your backup system keeps old files. How long does your backup system hold on to files?

I’ve just realised that a file is corrupt and I can’t read it.

This can be much more problematic: depending on how far back in time you need to go to get a good copy of the file. The backup system probably didn’t know the file was corrupt, so, provided it could be read, it was backed up with no warning. That means that your backups contain the corrupted file. Note: this is really an argument for implementing a proper archiving system, but that’s a topic for another day.

The PC/Laptop/File Server has crashed and I’ve lost all the data.

This scenario also covers loss of a laptop and is the case that is often not covered by “Cloud” based backup systems. Typically, these only backup the data and not the programs and settings from the affected machine. In this case you need to be able to restore the entire machine; possibly on to dissimilar hardware – e.g. because you can’t get a direct replacement for the failed machine. Can your backup system restore to dissimilar hardware?

The key message is that to design and implement a comprehensive backup approach you need to what scenarios you are protecting against

How do you know your backup system is working?

It’s no good spending time and money backing up your data if you can’t restore it when you need to.

Many backup systems can be set to operate automatically and invisibly in the background. This is a good thing as you then don’t need to remember to actually run the backup process. However, it can mean that you don’t always see whether the backups are working properly. Hopefully, you get some form of report when the backup runs. Better still, you get a report when it fails: at least you can intervene and take some action.

Unfortunately, even if the backup runs it doesn’t always mean you can restore the data when you need it. Let me give you a real-world example from one of my clients.

This company had implemented a comprehensive process to backup all of the data from their Microsoft Small Business Server onto disk and magnetic tape. They took a full backup to tape once a month and then took incremental backups to an external disk each evening. The full backups were kept for four months, so in theory they could restore from each day for up a month in the past, and then from each month for four months.

Unfortunately, the disk controller failed. The disk controller was replaced, but the new one refused to recognise the RAID array of disks that held their data. They tried to restore from the previous day but it failed. So did a restore from the previous month. In fact, none of the backups would restore properly. Some of the data restored OK, but the Exchange mailstore refused to restore properly.

It was at this point that I was called in. When I took a close look it became obvious that the Exchange store had never been backed up properly because the backup software had not been configured properly.

When I quizzed them about it this, they admitted that they had never tried to perform a full restore of the server: i.e. they had never tested their backup. Thus, they never picked up the mis-configuration. They had been getting emails to say everything was OK, but the backup sets were partially corrupted.

This would have been apparent if they performed a test restore

Their defence was that it was too onerous to perform a full restore because they didn’t have a spare machine and they didn’t want to risk restoring on to the live machine.

It needn’t be onerous to test your backups

This is a typical response from a small business. They don’t have spare hardware and they don’t have the time. However, choosing the correct approach in the first place would have avoided this problem.

What they needed was a backup system that:

Allowed files and databases to be restored from a series of points in the past.
Had built in features to allow backups to be tested for integrity.
Had built in features to perform a test restore on to virtual hardware so that all aspects could be tested.
Allowed backups to be restored to dissimilar hardware.

The good news

Luckily, I was able to restore most of their Exchange mailstore. It did take quite a lot of time and effort, but it was possible. That isn’t always the case however.

Backup as a Service

After this chastening experience, they were keen to ensure that nothing like this would occur again. I implemented StorageCraft’s excellent ShadowProtect Continuous Data Protection [CDP] product on their Small Business Server and integrated it with GFI Max’s Remote Monitoring and Management Platform so that I could keep an eye on it. Disclosure: I am a reseller for these products

ShadowProtect is not the only CDP product on the market, but it is one of the best (in my opinion). ShadowProtect allows you to:

Protect your entire server—including the operating system, applications, services and your data.
Quickly and easily restore to a desired point-in-time after disaster strikes.
Perform full bare metal recovery of servers to the same system, new hardware or to and from virtual environments.

Addons allow you to keep identical copies of the backup at off-site locations and even bring up a virtualised environment off-site: giving you the ultimate Business Continuity solution.

Now, ShadowProtect runs every hour and makes a backup to a NAS device on their internal LAN. GFI Max’s Advanced Monitoring Agent monitors the backup jobs and raises an alert if there is a problem. It also monitors free space on the NAS and a number of other critical metrics on the server. If anything goes wrong, I get an email and can connect remotely to resolve it.

Futures

They are currently planning to extend this backup service so that the backups are replicated to a data centre where a virtual copy can be run up in the event that the server fails. The net effect of this is that the service interruption will be reduced to less than 1 hour if something goes wrong.

Take away

Backups are critical in a business environment and should not be optional. Not taking good care of your data is a gross dereliction of duty. However, it is important to look at your requirements before choosing a backup approach.

Action this day

As with any IT solution, making the right decision about a backup product can be tricky if you’re not a professional. I can help you here.

I can help you set your requirements and then take an intelligent, unbiased, decision about the best way to go. If needed, I can then help you implement and monitor the resulting solution.
Call me on 01480 476297 or email me at gareth @ agdon.co.uk and let’s have chat. There’s no obligation and I offer a 100% money back guarantee if you’re not satisfied with the results.

Zen and the art of email management

Get in control of your email, before it gets control of you using Folders, Rules and the Getting Things Done methodology

Last year, I gave a workshop to the Business Club Cambridge on the subject of “Control your email, before it controls you”. The session was well attended and I thought it was a good opportunity to put down my thoughts on this subject.

Hopefully, by reading how I deal with email, you will get some ideas for how you can get back in control.

Why is email a problem?

Sometimes, it seems that the World runs on email. Even with the advent of Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and all the other social networks, the volume of email pouring into Inboxes all over the world seems to rise inexorably. With this rise comes the inevitable need to deal with the increasing volume of mail: it needs to be managed.

An extra problem these days is that many of us use mobile devices to manage their email. Due to the restricted functionality and screen size of mobile devices, personal productivity can suffer badly if steps aren’t taken to reduce the amount of mail and manage what there is.

Managing your email

Over the years, I have developed a process that helps me keep on top of my email. It comprises the following measures:

Stop receiving messages that never get read
Use automation to handle low priority messages
Handle what is left in a structured fashion

Reducing the volume of email

How much email do you receive on a daily basis that rarely, if ever, gets read properly? If you’re like most people, you probably subscribe to newsletters, blogs and forums. If you are on LinkedIn, you probably get daily digests from groups. Plus, you get unsolicited mail.

Take a good, long look at what you receive and really ask yourself: do I really need to still get this?

If the answer is no, then unsubscribe from the list, group, forum or whatever.

Using automation

Most business class email clients have some way to auto-process incoming email messages. If you are a Microsoft Outlook user, then you have rules at your disposal (though they only give real value if you are connected to a Microsoft Exchange server). If you use GMail or Google Apps for Business, then you can use Gmail filters to achieve the same end.

The objective is to deal with as much low priority email as possible before it reaches your Inbox. This is based on the observation that little email really needs your immediate attention: most of it can be deferred to a time that you choose.

I have a number of folders that exist to contain unread, low priority messages: newsletters, forum posts, blog feeds. I do much of my email management using my iPhone, so I want only the important messages that require my immediate attention to stay in the Inbox. That way, when I do check my email, I see stuff that is relevant at that moment in time. I don’t see messages that might otherwise distract me and can be dealt with at another time.

Create rules/filters that intercept messages when they arrive in your Inbox and file them away in one of these folders. For example, I have a folder called “_Newsletters”. I then have a number of filters (I use Google Apps for Business) that move messages to that folder if they come from a known newsletter source, e.g. LinkedIn group messages. (These special folders start with an underscore so that they sort at the top of the folder list)

Process your mail the GTD way

I am a great fan of David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology and I follow the process for my email.

Each time I check my email (note, check my email, not be interrupted by my email) I go through each message in the Inbox and do the following:

Is this email intended for me? If not, delete it or forward it on.
Is this email informational: e.g. it’s just something to read? If so, file it in “_Read Later”.
Do I need to do something as a result of receiving this email? If not, file it away for future reference.
Can I do whatever it is right now and in less than two minutes? If so, do it and then delete/file the message.
File the message in the “_Action” folder to be dealt with later.

At the end of this process, I have an empty Inbox. Sure, I have some reading to do and I have some actions. They can be scheduled into my daily task list. I also need to allocate time to go through the “_Newsletter” folder. The point is that I spend less time reacting to incoming email messages and more time being productive.

Zen is an empty Inbox

I often see people who have Inboxes with thousands of emails in them. When I ask them about this, they admit that some of them have been there for months, if not years, and that they will probably never get around to dealing with them. My answer is simple: delete them all. If you can’t bring yourself to do this, move them all to a folder called “old stuff” and ignore them. Admit to yourself that you will never do something with them and move on with my approach to managing your email.

The advantage of my process

The real advantage of my process comes when I am on the road and using only my iPhone or my iPad. Screen real estate is limited and so is time. By following the steps I have given above, I can keep on top of what is really important and spend less time distracted by stuff. It has meant that even when I am on holiday, I can still keep on top of my email and deal with important and urgent messages without spending too much time “at work”

Share the good news

Try it yourself and let me know how you get on. If this process works for you, tell others about this post. Feel free to link to it, or share it on your social networks.

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