I read an interesting article on Life Dev suggesting that you should never check your e-mail first thing in the morning or before bed. The article makes some excellent points, but I’d like to disagree with the solution.

To summarize, the author describes the perils of checking your e-mail at night or first thing in the morning. The core argument is that mail can take a while to get through, with messages like funny videos making it very easy to become derailed for 2 hours just surfing the net. Instead of being productive by checking your mail regularly you are burning up the most precious working hours or staying up too late and not get enough sleep.

All of this rings very true for me. About two years ago I fell in the above trap and combined with online forums I wasted ridiculous amounts of productive time. The result was the feeling that I never had enough time to do what I needed to, constant tiredness from a lack of sleep, and gradually increasing procrastination. Yikes.

Nevertheless the entire time I read the article, rather than nodding my head profusely I found a voice in my head shouting “what if your e-mail is important to your work?”. Being an entrepreneur I don’t have the luxury of turning off work beyond the 9 to 5 timeslots and there is always the possibility of an e-mail in my inbox that either needs to be answered urgently or will drastically reshape my schedule for the day. Knowing what’s coming at me as soon as possible makes it much easier to make good use of my time.

If the idea of not checking your mailbox sounds unrealistic for your situation I’d like to propose an alternative that I’ve successfully used for the past year. I say go ahead and check your e-mail in the morning. Check it before bed. Have your mail client running all day while you work. Give your e-mail as much visibility as you feel you need to be comfortable! The trick is to use a highly underutilized feature of virtually every mail client out there.

The Follow-up E-mail Flag

Virtually all mail clients have this feature. In Outlook it is literally a flag beside each message that you can click. In Gmail it is a star. It provides a very simple way of marking an e-mail message for follow-up along with an easy way to find these messages later.

I actually have two very different e-mail modes. Checking e-mail and responding to e-mail. The first mode can occur at anytime, and since I have my mail client always on and a BlackBerry strapped to my belt, it’s best described as “all the time”. When I check my e-mail I scan over each message very briefly (not everything needs to be fully read right away) and either flag it, leave it, or delete it. If an e-mail is flagged I am comfortable in knowing that I will get back to it at my liesure. Something that is high priority may get an immediate response, but anything else is saved for an appropriate time. I make a mental note of any e-mails with attached actions, allowing me to be aware of what is coming up without necessarily needing to act on it right away.

Not responding to everything is tricky at first as it takes a little bit of discipline to not watch that funny video right away or respond to every single question that someone may have of you. The author of the LiveDev article is perfectly right that doing so will quickly waste the most valuable productivity hours that you have. You also need to get in the habit of checking what messages you have flagged. E-mail clients generally have a separate view, but I’ve gotten in the (possibly bad) habit of simply scrolling through my inbox and watching for flagged messages. I find that needing to flip to a flagged messages only view is a little unintuitive and is a lot more likely to get forgotten.

Bonus E-mail Tip

If you look at my inbox you may become disgusted at the mess that it’s seemingly in. Virtually every undeleted message remains in there, with no real organization. The reality is that I’ve given up on attempting to artificially file messages on arbitrary criteria like the person who sent it or its topic. I was lead to do this after a combination of filing cabinet advice from David Allen’s Getting Things Done and Gmail’s unique tagging model. It turns out that the more places you have to store things, the more places they aren’t when you need them!

I’m confident that the e-mail that I am looking for is in my inbox. If it comes from a certain person I can sort my inbox by name and usually find it that way. The same applies to subject and date, both of which also greatly narrow down the location of an e-mail to a scannable size. If I’m using GMail I tend to simply search for the e-mail as the engine works really well and returns results instantly. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for Outlook’s search, which can take several minutes to find what you are looking for. I recommend searching in Outlook as a last resort, and using the sorting function as much as possible.

I should note that I do use folders for certain special messages, like order receipts and automated e-mails. These special cases only get checked in a certain way and in the case of automated e-mail can really clog up an inbox if not dealt with separately. At the time of this writing I only have six such folders.

I’m happy to say that I’ve been featured in three blog carnivals this week, all of which have plenty of excellent material from a variety of authors. Be sure to check out the following for the best of what the net has come up with this week on the following topics:

• Carnival of Business
• Carnival of the Capitalists
• Personal Development Carnival

Wait a minute, what’s a carnival?

A carnival is a regularly posted collection of links to blog entries on a certain topic. They tend to be hosted by a different blog each week, and submitted articles are chosen by the author of the publishing blog. You can find more information at BlogCarnival.com

Two months ago I was introduced to a fascinating technique called Mind Mapping. This is a rather unique way of arranging ideas visually which makes it very easy to understand, work with, and expand on complex data. I have been using it extensively in business planning and software design, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg for a technique that can be used to take effective notes in class, plan events, manage your personal life, plan out a resume or novel, organize feedback, create documentation, establish goals, and so much more.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s an actual mind map:

Click for a larger version. This is a sample map of the college application process, courtesy of the Mindjet mind map library.

Mind mapping is very simple and has the following general structure:

• Start with a single central topic.
• Create topics around the central topic and connect back to the central topic with lines.
• Each topic can have its own topics branching out.
• Symbols and images provide additional information.
• Notes can be added in a callout balloon form or another technique you prefer.

Doing this on computer is great because any good mind map program will continously re-arrange the map to fit all the topics that you are adding. If you are drawing it then you have to make sure to leave enough space to come back and fill in topics. Mind maps are highly visual so having an aesthetically pleasing technqiue or a highly graphical program is a tremendous bonus.

So What’s So Great About This?

Mind maps make it mentally easy to work with large sets of information. Rather than presenting a linear list (which creates a false hierarchy between items on the same level), it creates a balanced set of topics with only their real hiearchy represented. Other articles can do a better job of explaining the scientific theory behind this, but from personal experience I can attest that this is a far easier way to ingest the information presented.

This non-linear representation also applies to how a mind map can be filled out. Topics can be added anywhere as the map grows, creating a wonderfully flexible system for brain storming, taking notes, or creating outlines, all of which are processes that the brain doesn’t perform linearly. To see the difference try out mind maps then try using lists in a word processor for another exercise.

The freedom to add images, icons, and notes allows a single topic to be assigned significant meaning. In the case of computer software, topics can contain entire paragraphs tucked away behind a “has a note” icon, provide links to web pages, and even contain checkboxes to indicate completion. It’s a very flexible format that encourages creativity.

The Business Advantage

Mind maps can be applied in many business scenarios since they are perfect for mapping out a thinking process. From effectively organizing information in a meeting, finding the right vendor, or mapping out the company vision, the technique works. It’s no wonder that the commericial mind mapping applications are so expensive. Customers are corporations that can afford the price tags thanks to the benefits that the technique provides and a lack of lower-priced competition with the same additional features.

I have a lot of gripes with the traditional business plan, including the very structured and linear nature of the usual template. A huge mistake is trying to fill this thing out directly, and having attempted this many times I’ve decided that it’s just not possible to do so in a way that has substance. Such business plans are really just the executive summaries of a long process. It’s what you show to potential investors or your banker. So how do you actually put together the information that will eventually be placed in the Generic Business Template? Mind mapping is one such effective way.

It’s not difficult to imagine how you would layout a business plan with a mind map. Your central topic is your company name, and the next level of topics are all the usual business details:

• Values/Mission
• Product/Service
• Market Research
• Competition
• Marketing
• Sales
• Operations
• Human Resources
• Financials

Each of these would then have as many of their own topics as necessary to map out the business plan outline. You can attach notes and images as you see fit to create a meaningful outline for yourself. You can then turn it into a traditional plan for your banker, but feel free to refer back to the map itself for your own planning needs.

Note: I would attach a vision statement of the business directly to the main topic as a sort of subheading, since everything that branches out from the main topic is being driven by this statement.

Mind Mapping Resources

To learn more about the technique visit some of the links below:

Wikipedia Article: good overview and contains a great list of available software.
Innovation Network: article that demonstrates mind map technique step by step.
Mindjet Library: tonnes of sample maps. Requires the Mindjet software, but the reader is available free. This is a great place to get ideas on how to use mind maps.