David Bridle Design

A Great Experiment with Unexpected Side Effects

I went through a stage awhile back on productivity. I got really into how to be more productive. Obviously I found the GTD process. Which lead me on the a blog post on 43Folders (insert link to post). In a nutshell it was talking about the creative process and how difficult it is to get into The Zone to be creative, whether that is writing, designing,coding etc. Some of the point that I decided to use were to do with emails. The way we has become so demanding of the receiptant and conditioned into replying the instant it arrives. So I put into practice some of the tips, I removed the little red badge from my mail.app icon, I changed the autocheck time to one hour and removed the sound. I suddenly found that I was getting more done without this distraction. I have reached the stage were I don’t even have it open anymore. Great I thought, but the side effect came into play. My iPhone has become my email client! I now check my emails on my iPhone, reply where necessary and if needed will go to my computer application only if I need to send a file. This then moved to my calendar. I now no longer have iCal open.

So now I have only design apps running which my computer seems to love me for and I am not getting distracted by emails. My iPhone is becoming my communications device.

Now that skype have a native app and push notification to follow with the new iPhone update I think skype will only be on my phone. We’ll see what happens when I upgrade the software.