How to appear competent in one easy step

February 1, 2012, 2:53 pm

Manage your email inbox well. That’s all there is to it.

Not that kind of inbox.

I understand that there are faculty members and administrators who receive many, many hundreds of emails a day and find it nearly impossible to keep up with the volume. I wish them good luck. However, if you are a graduate student or postdoc, you do not receive “too much email.” You might think that you do, but you are wrong. I’m sorry, but it’s true. You are simply managing it poorly.

If you miss important announcements, if you regularly fail to respond emails from collaborators asking for input, if you can’t get things done in time because you “didn’t know” about them (because you didn’t see the email), you will be perceived as incompetent and a drain on more productive people. However, if you are able to quickly respond to queries and solve problems in a timely manner because you have good control over your email inbox, people will think you are amazing. I receive anywhere from 50 to 500 emails a day, depending on the time of year, and unless I’m away from my office, my email inbox usually has fewer than 10 emails in it. I strive for emptiness, but that can’t always be accomplished. I also keep my email open at all times, and so when an email comes in asking a question, I can often answer it in less than 60 seconds. People think I am a superhero.

I am not advocating keeping your email open at all times like I do – it can be extremely distracting and hinder more important tasks like writing and research. However, there are still lots of ways you can improve your ability to respond. (None of these tips are my own invention – I freely admit to being strongly influenced by David Allen’s Getting Things Done and Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero.)

Quickly get rid of things that you don’t want to read. I get a lot of seminar announcements from various departments on campus, and the vast majority of them are deleted within 10 seconds of seeing them. If it’s a seminar I want to go to, I put it on my calendar and archive the message. There are lots of other kinds of messages that really don’t need my attention – I either delete those if they are not useful, or archive them so they’ll show up in a search later when I need the information. You can also use filters to automatically put such things in folders for you, so you don’t need to pay attention to them unless you want to.
Stop subscribing to things you don’t keep up with. Do you get journal table of contents alerts in your email? Do you ever actually read them, or do you think that you SHOULD read them and then they sit there, cluttering up your inbox? If it’s the latter, unsubscribe and use an RSS reader to keep up with journals instead.
Don’t use your inbox as a to-do list. Many people use emails as reminders for things they need to do. I used to do this too, but it is inefficient and annoying. Now, I add whatever it is to my task manager, and archive the message. Sometimes that to-do list item is simply “follow up on X,” which somehow annoys me less than seeing that email still sitting in my inbox, waiting for me to do something with it. There are lots of great task manager programs out there – give one a try if you don’t have one already. I have been devoted to OmniFocus ever since I first tried it in 2008 (it’s not free, and it’s Mac only, but if those things are ok with you, it is a seriously awesome program).
Will it take less than two minutes to answer the email? Then answer it already.
You don’t really believe you’re ever going to answer that 6-month-old email, do you? Just delete it already. You’re just making yourself feel bad by leaving it there, staring at you reproachfully.

Trust me, when your email inbox is no longer giving you a guilt trip every time you look at it, you’ll feel better, you’ll be more productive, you’ll look more attractive, and you’ll have more friends.

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mutchj

Is “however” an appropriate substitute for “but” or “But”, or is it more akin to saying “although”?

allan_metcalf

“however” is a soft “But.”
(single entendre, please)
big_giant_head

“However” and “although” have entirely different meanings. When my students begin a sentence with “although,” but don’t understand that it creates a dependent clause, I want to stab myself in the eye with an icepick.

mstripling

This is delectable. In an effort to distance myself from academic jargon and to sound more colloquial, my “buts” have gotten out of hand. Thanks for more sublte tools!
sciurus

I have an old college Latin grammar written just before the turn of the 20th century denoting “but” and others as “adversative conjunctions.” It states, “These denote opposition.” It is wonderful in the age of texting and its subsequent demise of language to even find an article like this. Another problem is the distinction between “which” and “that.”

jffoster

The ‘which ~ that’ is more complicated and in effect a “problem” only to those who let it be one. One of the few effects other than lexical that Norman and later Ile de France French had only English morphology and syntax was the very unGermanic (and un Old English) use of the interrogative, or “WH” pronouns as relative pronouns. Germanic tends to use formes derived from demonstratives as relative pronouns or a general relativizer -subordinator, in English _that_. And it appears that the WH words as relativizers never really caught on among the lower classes and now the general subordinator~relativizer _that_ is regaining strength. My bet is that that’ll win, although _which_ may hang on as an introducer of a nonrestrictive relative clause or inserted parenthetic sentence.

mathmaven

When I was in high school, we were told we could never, ever, ever begin a sentence with a coordinating conjunction. I know that’s no longer a rule (or maybe it never was, and my 9th grade English teacher was simply wrong), but seeing an entire blog post in which the act of beginning a sentence with a coordinating conjunction is legitimized is very soothing to me. It’s still hard for me to violate that rule, even though I know it’s no longer a rule. This post was good therapy.
http://incoherencies.net/ Benjamin Klein

“His main point, in contrast with the lesser, is that it seemed wild or at least primeval to a child.”

Perhaps he *did* mean “at least primeval,” in addition to what he said. But his use of “at least” was in saying “to a child at least” (i.e., if not to everyone, certainly to a child).
dank48

Doubtless the “rule” about not beginning a sentence with a coordinating conjunction was derived from the erroneous belief that one could not coordinate one sentence with another. Or one paragraph with another.

“But, in a larger sense . . .” this is patently nonsense. That “rule” belongs in the same ashcan as the Latin-based “rule” about splitting infinitives, the also Latin-based “rule” about ending a sentence with a preposition, and the just plain wrong-headed, rule-besotted prohibition of restrictive “which”:

The new vicar said he would wear no clothes that would distinguish him from others.
The new vicar said he would wear no clothes which would distinguish him from others.
The new vicar said he would wear no clothes, which would distinguish him from others.

Fowler thinks the second is “wrong” because of the entirely synthetic and totally witless notion that language is about following rules devised by experts. In fact the first two sentences mean exactly the same thing, and the third means something quite different, demonstrating the importance of commas. In the real world, the rules are deduced by experts on the basis of how people actually use the language, not the other way around.

Personally, I can’t imagine getting “but” and “although” confused, although that may be a failure of my imagination.
pplatt002

Just wondering: I would have thought the last word in Allan’s first paragraph should be “correctly.” I don’t intend to be presumptuous, so could someone please help me understand what I am missing? Thanks!

jffoster

Why would you have thought that?
iriselina

Some prefer to use adjectives as modifiers and some adverbs.I prefer adverbs but never know why I do so .Has it to do with sound effects , heard by the inner ear ?
I have asked my students to translate sentences into the mother -tongue to see whether they understand the rules of use for adverbs… and I have “listened” closely as I do not know all the languages, but in our many languages (here in India ) the adverb is used in different places, neither at the beginning nor at the end.Voice modulation does occur then. Hope I am clear!

aolvido

These delightful grammar lessons take me w-w-waaaaaaay back to my freshman-year college writing course and my writing instructor, Manny Matibag. Though an apparent perfectionist in matters of writing, Mr. Matibag was also very kind in correcting his students’ grammar and punctuation. But I still makes [sic] stupid writing error [sic] from time to time. Thanks for the ride!
janfreeman

Gosh — it’s not at all clear to me that example (a)

I would follow you anywhere in the world you’d care to go. But I don’t trust you.

in fact implies the conclusion “so I won’t follow you.” I don’t see any condition expressed (“if I trusted you”), and don’t see why it would be assumed from this utterance. At any rate, the question has generated a lively debate at my language blog, http://throwgrammarfromthetrain.blogspot.com, if anyone wants to weigh in.

midevilprof

I see it. In my reading, “would” conveys condition.

pnh22

I had the same response as Jan Freeman to example (a). It strikes me that there’s a gulf between the two sentences that can be filled in differently by various readers.

lisanyu

For faculty your students will think you’re a star as well. I can’t count the number of enthusiastic responses I’ve gotten from students simply by answering their questions in a timely fashion!
bizdean

“Will it take less than two minutes to answer the email? Then answer it already.” Those 2 minuteses add up. To serious productivity loss. Email is mail; it is not instant messaging. If your correspondents don’t understand that, phooey on them.If you respond instantly to email, you’re not efficient, you’re a patsy. Everyone in the organization will soon learn that you’re easily manipulated.

patrick_murtha

bizdean has a very good point. Being too efficient, too prompt, at answering email or anything else, can create expectations you may not be able to sustain, or want to be automatically associated with, and thus can backfire on you. For one thing, if you seem to be capable of handling a lot, it’s a cinch you’ll be asked to do more. At some point, I decided I wanted a reputation as someone quite competent, quite efficient, but no more than that – certainly not a superhero. Not aiming at heroism makes for a more manageable life.
goodeyes

bizdean obviously doesn’t answer email regularly. I’m impressed when email is answered quickly, but at least by the day sent is excellent too. Waiting a few days makes faculty look lazy and not doing their jobs.
sortaretired

I remember reading similar advice for handling paper (some famous time management book, but I don’t remember which one). You can spend more time looking at an email several times than it would take to answer and file or delete it the first time you open it. Because I’m easily distracted, I do have my email set to download only when I ask for it. But I check it pretty regularly and feel more in control of my life if my inbox is kept to one screenful of “unhandled” messages.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=615187474 Trish Barker

The suggestions wasn’t to reply to the email within 2 minutes of receiving it, but rather *when you have elected to read/respond to email* to knock out the ones that can be done in 2 minutes or less.

http://twitter.com/odoketa David Barber

This. Bill Gates said the first thing he does on a new machine is turn off email notifications. Set a time, maybe once every two hours, to do email. Do it. Get it done. Move on. And if it’s one of ‘those’ emails, pick up the phone/IM/take a walk. Don’t make a 5 minute conversation into a six day epic novel of one-liner emails.

Socratease2

Yes, this is some practical advice for those of us with blown up in-boxes, but what about the bigger point of why do we allow ourselves to be controlled by the tyranny of “instant communication?” I will seen as a super hero if I answer everything right away? Really? Who cares? I doubt that is even true, certainly I will be seen as proactive at least, I wouldn’t get too grandiose about it. I could also be seen as a slave to my Droid. I am sick of these expectations to return a text or email within 30 seconds and if you don’t, there is an etiquette problem. As usual, new technology does not allow you to be more efficient and provide you additional free time. What it does is allow you to do more work in a shorter period of time except there is never any time off. If people can’t wait for a reply within a reasonable period of time, screw ‘em. I’ll be a hero to myself.
oh_richard

Superheros don’t get email (“Sorry about the Joker’s bank heist Commissioner, I didn’t see the Bat Signal. If something was going on, why didn’t you email/text me?”)

Allen and Mann do make the point though that you don’t wander through email, you manage it, which generally means you limit the time it can take, set your priorities, and don’t make email for the sake of email…
barbarashell

I like the cat, although I was hoping for a connection between some emails are the stuff of [kitty] litter.
the_anthropologist

Years ago, as an African American teenager, I dropped out of high school primarily due to boredom and low expectations from the teachers in a segregated Chicago.
I desperately wanted to learn, but at my own pace and often with what I
found out later was the Socratic Method and critical thinking. I was fortunate. The truancy judge was curious about the goings-on and whereabouts of a child who landed in high school at the tender age of 12. After her discovery that my truancy included forays to the public and private libraries and that the librarians, tired of my interdisciplinary requests for books and journals, taught me the Library of Congress (LC) Classification System, she allowed me to
continue the forays. My court-ordered curriculum allowed me to do two things: continue my autodidactism and see the scaffolding beneath all knowledge, that is, LC.
Today, my e-mails, files, reports, and books are archived under the categories
of LC, with a top file called “Actionable”, which gets cleaned out rather than
lost in the “e-mail trash bin”. Whenever I have “new” material to add to my research files, the scaffolding (LC) allows for a quick file, sort and review.

One of my idiosyncrasies was where I placed my “time-oriented” schedules, or as Minerva Cheevy says, “If it’s a seminar I want to go to, I put it on my calendar and archive the
message.” My time-oriented events and issues are archived under : CLASS B – PHILOSOPHY. PSYCHOLOGY. RELIGION — BD493-701 Cosmology which includes “space and TIME.”

Kathleen Rand Reed
bizdean

Not only that, but using a coordinating conjunction as the first word of the sentence is dysfunctional. Except very occasionally, to break the rhythm (as well as the rule) for dramatic effect.