Sid Savara: Never Check Email First Thing In The Morning

Now, granted, perhaps they should have called if there was a fire... But perhaps your portion of the fix can wait until you get into the office, but should really be worked on as soon as possible. Should they wake you up with a phone call to tell you that, or send that email? If you are known to ignore emails for the first few hours, you'll be getting that wake-up phone call.

No, instead, I do exactly the opposite of this. I check my email first, get all the piddly stuff out of the way first, and then settle in for some real coding.

No, this gets you fired. At a startup, this gets you bad PR or worse, your servers burn in a fiery death as they get Slashdotted to heck and back while you "work on something important."

#2 – It’s Not Your Todo List

Actually, it is. I use Outlook's task pane to mark things for follow up. Without it, I'd forget a lot of things.

#3 – It’s An Excuse To Lack Direction

If you get enough email that this buys you enough time to get so distracted you can't work, then you need a better spam filter, or a more private email address. There is no reason you need to be on the front lines all the time. Intelligent filtering can help.

#4 – Reaction vs “Proaction”

Sometimes you need to react, because you didn't pro-act.

#5 – Searching For Excuses

If the excuse is good enough to stop working, perhaps you need better work.

#6 – There’s No Set Time Limit

So? Communication is more important than most menial tasks. Its the basis by which things get designed, built, and maintained. Don't underestimate the power of communication as a tool. Don't try to avoid it.

#7 – It Builds Expectation

I don't always respond to people immediately, but I do like to think before I reply. Sometimes I'll go off and draft have a reply, save it, and come back to it. If its out of "working hours", I can leave it be til the next work day. Otherwise, I top out at a couple of hours for latency. Why? Because I want that expectation; to foster good team relationships and dependability.