I have stopped email on my phone. Aren’t I cool?
No, really let me explain. I have been trying to pluck up the balls to stop using and relying on email for years. Of course it is a great tool etc. etc. But I just can’t resist checking it every five minutes and also sharing files and getting updates from your team SUCK.
It has taken years to get down to the five or so emails I find in my inbox everyday. Imagine my disappointment when I get there and only have five – what am I going to do with my time now?
Don’t Facebook me
Seriously though, I noticed a HUGE chunk of time appear in my week when OuiShare shifted from Facebook and a bit of email over to Slack. Even before this we were doing well with everything from OuiShare Fest to the local Summits co-created on a combination of Trello and Google Drive.
At Moon Dog we also had a Facebook group to connect the team, we work together everyday and are based in Europe, USA and Japan. I think the move to Slack and away from Facebook and email has brought us closer together as a team. We have a thread named ‘Chico’ (Check in and check out) in which we drop short messages about where we are and what we are doing, mostly so others know if we are able to chat about something, we podcasted about this in January here.
Every so often I’d get a drop box invite and that was it. Some of us used Facebook messenger for group chats and clunky file sharing. This is where I saw the biggest shift I no longer had to check Facebook for project messages I stopped checking Facebook full stop and stopped getting sucked into that vortex of ex-lovers photos and shit gif’s that I had to talk myself out of reposting.
I am deeply out of love with Facebook these days, their shift in algorithm and gangster like charging mechanism for reach is the biggest bait-and-switch in the history of the web. I’d rather pay to use Facebook and not have ads, especially the Tony Robbins self development ads, show up in my stream.
Death of an iphone
For the first time in my long and beautiful life as an iPhone users my iPhone went dark and would not reboot. I took it to the iPhone hospital on Regent Street and they reset it. This meant they wiped it all and I was left with factory settings. Instead of reinstall it from my Mac I decided to start to download apps as I needed them. First in were Slack, twitter, Audible.com, Voice Dream Writer, Instagram and Nimble. That was it for a day. I decided not to sync my contacts with the phone, instead I am using the Nimble App as my full time contact manager for my phone.
So when I call someone I do it from the Nimble App and it forces me to find another way of messaging them instead of email because I have disabled email on my phone. There are only six people who have called me or SMS’d me in a week. Everything else is via Slack, Trello and twitter. I don’t want to sound too important “everything else’ is still only a few messages a day.
This is because we work with Trello, Asana and Basecamp and comment openly on each others work in this environment, these platforms link to Slack so I only need to check Slack for updates. It is worth noting that these three project tools link directly to Fancy Hands, the virtual assistant service I have been using every week for over a year now, so I can assign tasks from with within each project without leaving the project platform – AND I can do this from my mobile device!
This is something I am making a concentrated effort over the next few weeks todo, I am so in the habit of opening up Fancy Hands app or Webpage to create a task ignore the much faster option of asking them from the project app. Even more dumb is that I often end up downloading and uploading a file that was already in the project tool and probably linked to a Google App Drive file so no need to download anything.
That £u<ki*g OOO Message
I left an ‘Out of Office’ message on my email – this annoys the hell out of my co-host Jon (and I am sure my OuiShare mates Elena and Francessca can recite it) – but it “makes” people, sorry I mean people can choose to connect with me on Slack or Twitter as requested.
So what happened is this:
My phone crashed and I had to do a factory reset – this deleted all my contacts and email settings from my phone.I thought that is it – I am done with email.
I am using Nimble / Slack / Twitter / my blog to communicate – this saves time and opens communication with everyone.“Yes but….”
Sorry this is the deal – 😉– 98% of the people who email me are on projects with me in Slack – so you can get me there.
– I will check here every so often – just don’t expect a quick response.
– In the unlikely event it is urgent call me on 07772042012I am using Nimble / Slack / Twitter / my blog to communicate – hit me up there to complain about my crappy and annoying out of office.
Wednesday 18th March 2015
p.s. There will be some of you who have seen this message 2000000 times – sorry – come here and I’ll give you a Bernie hug x
I don’t have urgent things, I am not a Doctor, Lawyer or Customer Service Rep and the few people I work with know where to find me if they have to and I don’t have to check my email – ever.
Last of all believe it or not – I am really looking to get to the stage where I just don’t need to check my phone. I know full well it is a habit, safety net, excuse to check out of where I am, reason to look for a reason to panic.
#Supercoolwife is right again
As my head has cleared up I have become aware of this perverse frame of mind that I worked very hard to develop and convince those around me that I was just that important enough to be able to reach 26 hours a day. Of course my #supercoolwife told me this ages ago, now I am not checking my phone so much for email can I hear her properly.
Thanks for Matthew Phelan for the photo and Luis and Clare – for #NoeMail 😉
