Author: admin

The only way to do email

September 17, 2024 / admin

[SIDENOTE: I don’t normally write about productivity / life hacks / systems. But I’ve read enough of them to feel like an expert, and let’s be honest, this isn’t complicated.]

Email. Or e-mail, as it once was. It’s old and crap, you are probably thinking.

Well, I’m here to defend it, and show you how to make it better. It is still old, but definitely not crap.

There are hundreds of productivity guides promising the best system to handle your email. You might think this is just one of those, and fair enough, but it’s more than that. What I’m advocating is also a simple but extremely effective philosophy about how you approach email, and in a way, everything.

Let’s begin with a few home truths.

Email is essential. Want to get access to your bank / utility / mobile account? Better have your email to reset your password. Shopping? Need email. Tickets? Email. Unavoidable. You have to accept that it underpins the account management of most social media, shopping, tickets, travel, utilities and pretty much anything else you can think of, and has done for many years. That’s not about to change.

Email is also a file-sending dream. Want to send me a document, but you’re on Google Docs and I’m on Teams? Never mind, just export and email. This is underrated.

Lastly, it’s a phenomenal newsletter service. Whether it’s niche publications, substacks, or big newspapers, there’s an amazing world of daily news and features that you can get, for free, in your inbox. What’s not to like?

So what’s it bad at?

It’s not great for keeping up with friends and family, quick responses and banter. WhatsApp is far better for that.

And it’s a much-abused work tool. All those large group lists, useless responses, emails with little purpose, discussions that would have been better as a call. Again, Slack and systems like it are often far better. Email has become a hell hole at times. Too many emails mean people just let things slide, don’t process properly.

Slightly undermining the file-sending dream – it’s also terrible for file management: duplicate data and copies. Systems like Google Docs and the like are far superior at avoiding version mishaps. One off documents: great. Version control – no thanks.

Which all means that email is old, unloved and neglected. But it shouldn’t be this way. Because despite these other systems, it still exists, and can be great.

But to get there, you have to think of the parallels with the physical world.

Imagine your (physical) post. Bills, cards, magazines, packages, presents, doctor’s letters, a new credit card. Imagine that you let it all pile up just inside your front door and never threw any of it out or moved it anywhere. That’s what most people do with email. It just sits in the inbox, piling up.

You wouldn’t do that with physical stuff. You open things, take action if required, move the post into your home. Read and throw away a magazine; put tickets in your wallet. And so on. You throw away a lot, if not nearly all of it. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t useful, for a bit. Even if you hoard waaaay too much stuff, you probably throw away most of your mail at some point.

Now, take a second to think about email. How should you tackle it?

First, folders (or in gmail, labels).

Some people have elaborate folder arrangements, and (usually) that’s OK. But in reality, there’s only two folders you need:

read
to do

Everything else should be archived, if you are in Gmail, or put in some archive folder, if you are in another system.

That’s it. You might create other, simple folders like ‘travel’ or ‘tickets’, or whatever. But mostly, those two will do.

Then, empty your inbox for good.

Now, when you open your email, your entire mindset should be one of three things:

I’m here to sort out any incoming mail
I’m in ‘work mode’ and going to do whatever action a ‘to do’ email requires
I’m in ‘reading mode’ and fancy reading something interesting

That’s it. Consider that approach for a minute. Email fills many people with boredom or dread, mainly because it’s overwhelming. A full inbox is a mixture of things to do, read, maybe keep, annoyances, things for later, maybe someday, maybe never. That’s a stressful set up.

If you clear your inbox into the simple folder structure I’ve outlined, you are free of all that. You enter your email in the right ‘mode’, every time. It’s not just the removing of the weeds: this approach changes your mindset completely, and means you enter email with a clear purpose. You open your email app with one of only three things in mind: sort, work, or read – it can only be one of these. Let’s explore them in a little more depth.

1) I’m here to sort.

Great – sorting can happen anywhere. On a bus, on the toilet. Whatever. It’s easy. Just ask yourself: what is this email? Here are the typical answers, and the action.

“This email is…
… something I need to do” → do it now if you can, or file in ‘to do’ and do it later
… something I’d like to read (later)” → file in ‘read’
… letting me know about something” → fine, now you know. So delete it. Or archive it if it’s important and you mustn’t forget it (but it probably isn’t). If it’s super critical, print it out. Or save it as a PDF elsewhere.
… just shopping junk” → so junk it. (Better still, unsubscribe if it’s annoying.)
… a message that I need to reply to” → fine, it’s a ‘to do’ item. Or quickly reply now and archive.
… a bill” → archive, unless you need to act on it, in which case, put in ‘to do’.
… a notification about a message in another system” → what, like AirBnB or Facebook? Then delete it, and go to the other system.

You get the idea. Most emails you can tell what to do by the sender and subject. Other’s require a bit of thought. Overall, sorting gets faster and easier. You might need to do it once a day, or more, or less if you really don’t use email much, but the more you do it, the faster and easier it becomes – it’s seconds rather than minutes.

2) I’m here to work.

Great – crack on. Open up ‘to do’ and start from the bottom, as that’s what has been longest neglected. Or just jump into whatever is deadline-driven.

NOTE: Email isn’t some fluid to-do app where you drag items around into priority order like Trello or Asana or whatever. Those apps are different. Email isn’t that. You should have a different app – a physical notebook can be good – to collect your thoughts and ideas. But work often requires email, so get the ‘to do’ folder moving when you can. Remember: work isn’t ‘doing email’ – email is sometimes part of work.

3) I’m here to read.

Excellent. This is one of the best things about email. Hopefully you have signed up to some cool newsletters about your favourite thing, whatever that is. Email newsletters can be awesome. Enjoy, and stick to just reading.

Your ‘read’ folder might become a bit big. Fine – delete stuff, no-one’s testing you on it. But keep it just to things you want to read. It should feel like a fun pile of magazines, or a bookshelf, rather than a chore.

That’s it. Email will always be with us, so approach it with a healthy attitude. Don’t let it fester, or nag at you. Act on it, ruthlessly delete it, clear it, and then you can start to enjoy it, or at least appreciate it again.

FIQs – frequently imagined questions.

I need more folders than just two!

Then do that. But remember – more folders means more chances of missing stuff. Most email providers have good search systems, so you can usually find what you need. Don’t feel guilty – I have lots of folders, but they are for dull reference things like ‘insurance’ or ‘travel’. They work well, as long as you know what you are doing with each. I spend almost all my email time in ‘read’ or ‘to-do’. The others are just in case, really. Although I do like having a ‘waiting’ folder for things I’ve ordered or are waiting on, so I don’t forget things. They then go to archive / delete.

I can’t clear my inbox – it has thousands of emails.

You’re not trying. First step – put anything that requires a reply or an action in ‘to do’, then archive EVERYTHING ELSE. That will do it.

You can then search for a specific email sender that you know sends a lot of email, and always should be in ‘read’. Move the entire results set for that sender. Better still, create a filter or rule on incoming email. OR, go radical, and delete everything from two years ago.

I need a new email.

Fine, that’s up to you. I like Gmail, as the search and archive systems are great.

Actually, I like a cluttered inbox.

Seriously? There’s no helping you. But you’ve read this far, so I think you are just in denial and should try my system.

This sounds suspiciously like GTD.

I like GTD, but that’s a full-on productivity thing, more than just email. GTD also advocates an empty inbox. It’s worth exploring GTD, certainly. It can be a bit cultish, but that’s ok. So is Wim Hof, but we should all take a cold dip now and then.

Isn’t this Inbox to Zero?

Yes, but it’s simpler. Inbox to Zero is more about email in the workplace. I’m talking more about email for life.

Why am I scared?

Deleting stuff is scary. But believe me, it’s great. Give it a go! Free your mind.

How to think about Twitter (in the new Musk era)

November 4, 2022 / admin

There is so much going on with Twitter right now, that there’s no point in trying to summarise. Aside from to say – this is the early stages of the Musk takeover, November 4 2022.

If you want to think critically about Twitter, here are a few pointers.

Twitter punches way above its weight.

The thing about Twitter was never the numbers, but the quality of contributors. You have academics, agencies, politicians, policymakers, journalists, engineers, soldiers, thinkers, all mixing it up. That’s amazing.

But Twitter’s numbers were never that great, whether overall users, revenue, market cap. That was a problem for Twitter as a business. But as a utility, a service, Twitter was everything. Twitter was where the world broke news. This is and was its value. Facebook might have 2.whatever billion users, but had negligible impact in news-making.

Why? Let’s break it down into Content, Tech, Verification (blue ticks), and Advertisers.

CONTENT

One reason is journalists and the media. If Twitter has succeeded in anything, it’s harnessing the mainstream media (MSM). MSM might be ‘bad’, but actually, the MSM is how most people access the news, on whatever platform, even if it’s packaged as social. Social media’s greatest ‘trick’ was to convince the world that the MSM didn’t matter, when in fact, it amplified it, and gave it a bigger voice. I don’t watch GBNews, as I’m not interested in right-wing shitposts dressed up as news. But I’ve seen it on Twitter. Equally, I never tune in to GMB, or Jeremy Vine, but I’ve watched clips loads of times, when people like Owen Jones or Femi are debating some idiot like Ann Widdicombe about immigration or Brexit. It pops up on Twitter.

It’s not linear broadcasting, or traditional MSM. But most articles you see shared, most clips laughed about, are MSM. And if they aren’t, they get verified and amplified by the MSM, who repost them, so around it goes.

But the content isn’t just shared on Twitter – it IS Twitter. People like Trump, Musk, and others who are newsworthy in whatever they say, and say a lot, and say it on Twitter. Obviously, Trump’s gone, but his legacy is that saying X on Twitter, if you are important enough, IS a story. Not part of a story, evidence of X eleswhere, but X itself.

TECH

Rarely mentioned, but really important, is the ease of embedding. Almost all news websites embed tweets as source material. It’s part of the appeal. You can pad out your content easily with a few tweets, as well as doing serious journalism. Other social platforms are far harder in this regard – Facebook makes it very cumbersome. It’s also a function of aspect ratios.

What, you might ask? Well, embed an Insta story, TikTok post, snap or whatever, and it’s designed vertically. If you are embedding into a CMS, that’s annoying – it pushes down your content, tries to fill up the width, and generally looks too big. Tweets, on the other hand, are horizontal. That’s useful – they fit more neatly into the CMS, don’t clutter up, and their design is pretty minimal. Overall, a tweet in a story doesn’t screw up your page load or get in the way of ads. It’s a win-win.

VERIFICATION

Let me talk about ME for a minute. I have a blue tick. It took me a long time to get one. I have applied I think 3 or 4 times in my life. When I was at the FT, I was refused a blue tick as I didn’t use my FT address for Twitter – I preferred by personal address. As an author, I was refused one as I wasn’t part of an ‘organisation’ that Twitter recognised. As a freelance editor, I hadn’t accumulated enough bylined pieces – no name, no cigar. At Newsweek, I have accumulated bylines and – it seems crucially – an author page, so that worked. Boom, blue tick. Do I deserve one? I think so, I’m a sensible person with a public profile who has done some decent work in journalism and publishing over my career. Will I pay $8? Fuck off. I wouldn’t pay $1, once, for a blue tick forever.

The whole blue tick issue has become very toxic. Yes, you can argue it’s feudal. Or managed badly. But the thing Musk gets wrong, so utterly, totally wrong, is that it’s a reputational mark, and by definition you CAN’T BUY REPUTATION. You can improve the criteria, but reputation is nothing if you can pay for it. To make a blue tick (or white tick on blue badge, whatever) an $8 fee, makes the whole idea redundant.

So blue ticks were a good system. Not perfect, but good. They made people aspire to be credible. That’s useful on a platform where anyone can jump in to the debate. It helped Twitter stand out, create authority, which fed back into the small-but-important user base.

ADVERTISERS

Twitter gets revenue from ads. Any ad business is inherently tricky, for two reasons.

1) Ad revenue is pretty much a zero sum game, because ad spend is not exponential. Otherwise, Google wouldn’t have killed newspapers. Everyone is chasing the same ad dollar.

2) While everyone talks about network effects for users, which is how Facebook got to 2.x billion and MySpace didn’t etc, advertisers don’t give a damn. They aren’t locked in to Twitter any more than you are locked in to buying a brand of coffee. Switching is relatively easy. So if Musk allows free-wheeling hate speech to run rampant on Twitter – and he’s just fired half the company, so there’s every chance it will – then advertisers will flee. Suddenly, $44bn looks like a lot of money for a slightly-more intellectual version of Parler or Truth Social.

Social media has had a virtuous circle with the ad business, up until around this year. The next new thing attracted a keen audience; advertisers chase audience, especially hard-to-reach demographics. Ad revenue means investment in product, which makes system more attractive to audience, and round we go.

That revenue is needed to monitor content, because dangerous content can harm: harm people, communities, the environment, democracy. As a libertarian businessman, Musk hate moderation. It’s a black hole, in his view. But it’s key to keep the ‘good’ audience, and advertisers, engaged and happy.

The opposite, vicious circle, is also true. Platforms get stale; audience declines; ad revenues fall, so investment and moderation decline; and the degregation means more people leave (or become dormant). Shares plummet.

Meta is now the 25th most valuable company in America. It’s tanking. There are lots of reasons, which I won’t go in to, but the very fact it’s now below Pepsi is evidence to the fact that Big Tech isn’t a one-way bet. It’s an advertising vehicle, and people don’t like ads that much.

So what’s the answer?

There is no easy answer, in that Musk has control of Twitter, is clearly keen to change it in terms of less interference and more anything-goes; and I predict it will become a useless wasteland in less than a year. Advertisers will disappear, major voices will tire and find somewhere else.

The true value of Twitter was in authority. The fact that serious people used it. In that regard, it should have been protected like a utility, not left to the mercy of an eccentric firebrand billionaire with dubious politics and a penchant for spreading conspiracy theories.

If Twitter fails, what will the impact be?

One thing is that centrist/left voices will be potentially digitally homeless. Something should fill that void, something commercial. But it’s not the be-all.

More important is the public service element of Twitter. A digital, non-profit platform is needed for announcements, public broadcast, probably with no conversation around it, for people to follow as a service. Twitter is amazing in emergencies, for delivering news in the purest sense – not opinion, but up-to-the-minute facts. Where does that go without Twitter? We are left scrabbling around on a myriad of disparate websites.

And that’s where I’ll leave it.

I’m going to post this on Twitter, and then I may never post anything again. We’ll see.

TAMPA, FLORIDA - FEBRUARY 07: Tom Brady #12 of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers hoists the Vince Lombardi Trophy after winning Super Bowl LV at Raymond James Stadium on February 07, 2021 in Tampa, Florida. The Buccaneers defeated the Chiefs 31-9. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)

Tom Brady: winner, passer, extinct?

February 8, 2021 / admin

As Tom Brady works out which finger to put his seventh Super Bowl ring on, there are plenty of ways to admire his performance and achievements. As a friend (Leo in HK) put it to me today, he’s a statistician’s dream.

But there’s one statistic for me that stands out for Tom Brady, 2021 edition. In the regular season, he rushed for a total of six yards.

Six. Yards.

That’s not a lot for a quarterback in a single game. For a whole season?

OK, so Brady is 43, which means I’m going to cut him some slack. He’s not there to scamper about and pick up yardage with his legs. He’s there to pass in the pocket and run the game like the old pro he is, still the best around.

However, his rushing yards mark him out as a dying breed. Here’s why.

The NFL is a constantly evolving league in terms of tactics. Some are inspired by rule changes. Some rules are coach and stats-led – for example, more teams are now willing to gamble on 4th down and risk giving the ball back to the opposition, rather than punt the ball away. And some tactics evolve given the personnel at teams’ disposal. For example: the running quarterback.

Traditionally, the quarterback passes the ball from the “pocket” – an area where he is protected by his linesmen. Some quarterbacks are more mobile than others, making passes as the pocket breaks down and being able to pass on the run (Patrick Mahomes and Aaron Rogers are amazing at this). Others have been known as scrambling quarterbacks – able to run the ball when pass options downfield were covered by the defence. But scrambling was a last resort, when-things-break-down move.

Now, some quarterbacks are now such good runners as well as throwers of the ball that plays are being designed for them to run straight away. Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens and Kyler Murray of the Arizona Cardinals are the two brightest examples in the league. More will follow.

This presents defences with a nightmare. Normally, a defence has to guess what the opposing offence is up to: will they try to run the ball, or pass it? And the formation of the offence gives away a lot: you can sometimes see by how players are positioned whether the offence set up to run or pass. If there is no running back and four or more wide receivers on the field, that would mean it’s a passing play. But if a team has Lamar Jackson, that might be misdirection – he could be ready to run.

And Jackson is running – a lot. In both of the past two season he has rushed for over 1,000 yards, a mark that is usually only attained by specialist running backs. Murray rushed for over 800 yards in 2020.

Overall, the total yards rushed by quarterbacks has risen over the last few seasons. In 2020, it was over 9,000 – the highest ever.

Not only that, quarterbacks are rushing at crucial moments – rushing touchdowns by quarterbacks have leaped up – in 2020, there were 126, a record. That’s 40 more than in 2019, and double the number from only five seasons ago. Quarterbacks now account for around a quarter of rushing touchdowns. A decade ago it was about one in ten.

The rushing quarterback might also be changing other stats. The recently-completed 2020 season saw the fewest interceptions (on a per game basis) ever. The defence caught opposition throws on only 395 occasions – the first time under 400 since 1982 (a strike-shortened year). Why is that? It could be that quarterbacks are more accurate, or there are softer defences. But it is also noticeable that in crucial moments when a team needs yards to keep a drive going, quarterbacks are trusting themselves to run for it rather than throwing risky passes.

So how will this evolve? There are a current crop of young quarterbacks who are comfortable running if needed – Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen for example – as well as out-and-out runners like Jackson and Murray. And some of the less mobile old guard will retire soon – Tom Brady and Drew Brees, both two of the all time greats, are over 40. Even some of the longer- established quarterbacks are good scramblers – Russel Wilson and Aaron Rogers pick up crucial first downs on the run.

Into the league will come talented players such as Trevor Lawrence, a college player soon to be drafted in the first round and touted as a potential great. Lawrence’s passing ability is hugely exciting, but he can run too. The role of the quarterback is evolving, and defences will have to keep up.

Sources:
https://www.statmuse.com/nfl/ask/qb-rushing-yards-percentage-each-season
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/NFL/

A visual history of Coups

January 27, 2021 / admin

Was the violent invasion of the US Capitol on 6th January this year a coup? It certainly had the hallmarks of a coup, even it it might be expedient for politicians to refer to it as insurrection.

Because a coup is distinctly un-American, right?

Well, up until now.

The Cline Center of University of Illinois run the Coup D’état Project, and their data reveal a story of coups through the last 75 years.

The history of coups in the post-war period is dominated by personalities – strongmen such as Idi Amin and Col. Gaddafi. But those are the winners – leaders who took power and held it for many years.

So how successful are coups? According to the Project’s data, coups are a less than 50:50 shot – they are successful 45 per cent of the time.

The coup heyday was the 1960s and 70s, in the post-War, post-colonial settlement period where independent statehood was still nascent in many parts of the world. And although Latin America has a reputation for coups, fuelled by spy movies, sub-Saharan Africa is the most coup-prone region.

Since 1980 there has been a move to relative stability – the number of coups has declined, with the 2010s having the fewest of any decade. The last ten years has seen only 17 successful coups, with 30 attempted or conspired.

Some other insights… since 1945:

Although Sub-Saharan Africa is the most coup-heavy region, Bolivia is the most coup-prone nation with 37, including 16 successful coups.
Coups are more of a Spring / Autumn thing. November is the month with most coups, closely followed by October, April and March.
1975 was the busiest year for coups with 32. 1979 was the most successful with 18 out of 22.

Anyway, here is the visual history – click for the the full size image.

So was 6th Jan a coup? The Cline center say… maybe.

Sport Geek #80: Trump vs Sport

September 27, 2017 / admin

Here are six thoughts on the Trump vs Sports saga.

Another day, another unbelievably offensive tweet. Trump just keeps on. The question is, at what point does this go from appealing to his core, to putting them off? Greg Popovich asked that question brilliantly. Love Greg.

If I was an NFL owner, and my team needed a QB backup, I’d sign Colin Kaepernick in a heartbeat. He’s got the tools. Half the league has gone down on one knee now, so surely his brand isn’t that toxic any more? It could be a tactical and marketing masterstroke.

Imagine this in the UK. You can’t. Why not? Well, we don’t ram the national anthem down everyone’s throats every match. Internationals, yes. Premiership games, no. (And our police don’t shoot black guys all the time.) America could do itself a favour by toning down the flag-patriotism-God-on-our-side rhetoric. But it won’t.

The NFL is in a bind. The players are mainly black. The fans are largely white, and right-leaning. The boos at the knee protests are awful. ‘Those uppity black guys disrespecting the flag!’ Owners have taken their players’ side for now, but for how long? If this gets ugly, with crowds staying away and ratings down, how could they reverse the tide? Fire the whole team, as Trump would prefer? That’s not going to work. Their only hope is that it blows over. That’s unlikely – this started over a year ago and is just getting a head of steam. In most sports, the fans and players have a bond; in the NFL, the bond seemed fairly weak in the first place. Now?

The NFL has bigger long term problems: head injuries, fewer kids playing at school, tactics that have made the game a bit dull (short passes in particular), the rise of soccer. This race row isn’t a sport in crisis. It will however distract the league from those other problems, none of which are going away.

At the heart of all this is the utter stupidity of America. A protest about racial injustice (equality and justice being core American ideals) has been morphed into disrespecting your country. I’m not sure if this is alt-right mendacity or just white blood dumbness. Either way, Americans have shown themselves up again. It makes Saudi Arabia look enlightened (hey, women can drive now!).

TRUMP: MORE

Trash talk – sports does it better than Trump.

This story was fading until Trump gave it a shot in the arm.

This might be mainly about the NFL, but LeBron James has been the most eloquent.

TENNIS

Not heard of the Laver Cup? Well, it’s how the Davis Cup should be.

Maria Sharapova’s feud with Serena Williams, explained.

Rafael Nadal is not just the king of clay.

Sloane et al – are we about to see a US revival?

BOXING

Obit of Raging Bull Jake LaMotta. Read.

BASEBALL

Who still likes Friends? Baseball players, that’s who.

FOOTBALL

The rebirth of Leeds United.

It’s raining penalties in the Champions League – but what’s behind the increase?

How professional number crunchers are giving football clubs a competitive advantage.

Bye!

My blog revived

October 2, 2010 / admin

There’s been a hiatus of two years on this blog – too long, obviously. I won’t bore you with excuses. Just to say that the posts prior to this one are mainly about sport and statistics, whereas from now on, who knows. Sport will figure highly, of course.

******************** ^^^^ ********************
NEW BLOG PLATFORM
__________________________________

BELOW IS AN IMPORT FROM MY OLD BLOG>>>