I receive a fairly insane number of emails a day, and have always been rather slow in responding to them. I’ve recently started getting much better, however, and wanted to quickly share what works for me in case it helps anyone else.

1. Get a good spam filter. I use Knowspam.net – as I check email on both my computer and phone, I wanted something server-side. It’s a challenge/response system, so literally no spam gets through. I loaded up my address book when I joined, and it scans my outgoing mail for new addresses, so only people who have never emailed me before and have never received an email from me are hit with an authentication request, and then only the first time. Having something automatically separate the wheat from the chaff makes wading through all the email I receive merely extremely tough, rather absolutely impossible.

2. Read the emails you receive. If any require less than two sentences of response, or absolutely require immediate attention, reply as soon as you read them. Doing so guarantees you respond to the time-sensitive messages in a timely manner, and it keeps easy ones from piling up.

3. Make a ‘reply’ folder, and move everything else there. Your inbox then stays clean, making it easy to triage incoming mail.

4. When you have some free time, pull up the reply folder and start working through the messages one by one, bottom up. That is, open the oldest email, and reply to it before going on to the next. This keeps you from saving the hard-to-write ones, saving them even longer, and then realizing you’ve gone weeks or months without replying to them.

5. If you find the reply box is getting particularly full, and you have a laptop, I find it helps immensely to get out of the office (or home workspace) and head to a coffee shop or restaurant instead, as it reduces all the possible procrastination-friendly distractions to a bare minimum. Plop down somewhere, and do nothing but chip away at the reply folder.

6. Another quick time saver: don’t save old emails in specific folders or categorize them or whatever else. Just delete everything, but set Outlook (or whichever program you’re using) to archive rather than delete the mail in your ‘deleted items’ folder, and set the archive date out eight or twelve months. This way, you can sort by sender and quickly find specific exchanges by skimming the list of emails from that sender; or, if you can’t remember who sent it, you can always search for the content the email contained. Either way, it’s likely faster than devising and sticking to an elaborate system of folder categorization.

Between these six things, I’m starting to feel like I’m no longer drowning in emails – now I’m only, say, neck deep. Still, that’s a big improvement. Try it out, and see if it works for you.

Frequently, I hear myself saying things like: “I’m sorry, I can’t have dinner with you on Thursday.” And when I say it, it sounds true enough. But with a bit of reflection, I realize what I actually mean is: “I’m sorry, I could have dinner with you on Thursday, but I’ll be doing ______ instead, which I’ve decided is more important.”

And, at some level, that’s absolutely fine. Life, after all, is a process of constant prioritization – there are inevitably (at least occasionally) more demands on our time than we can possibly simultaneously accommodate. Really, it only becomes a problem when we forget we’re the one making those choices, that, whatever our intentions, our actions are what demonstrate where our priorities really lie. Perhaps that PowerPoint presentation really is more important than your friend’s birthday party; but make that choice consciously. Don’t simply chug ahead doing what you believe you “need” to do, occasionally pausing to lament how little time you have for the meaningful things in your life.

As I tuck another year under my belt, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the cyclical nature of life, the never-ending ebb and flow. For months at a time, I’ve noticed, I won’t meet anyone new; then suddenly, for months I find new friends everywhere I look. One week I’ll write with reckless abandon; the next, I have absolutely nothing to say.

Nowhere, however, are such high and low tides more pronounced than in my work. During some stretches, I am the king of procrastination – I slack with the best, happily pissing away hours and days accomplishing absolutely nothing at all. Then, suddenly, I’m hit with a burst of productivity; leaping into action, thrilled by the idea of getting something done, I’m unable to rest until I’ve seen a slew of projects through to completion.

With each passing year, I’ve increasingly embraced that cyclicality. Pushing during a lull, I’ve realized, is simply a waste of time and energy; better simply to enjoy the peace and quiet, waiting for the powerful forward drive of the next motivated stretch.

I say this all by way of apology, because I sat down in my chair this afternoon wildly excited to roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty making extraordinary movies. I’ll do my best to keep blogging regularly, though I must admit it may on some days fall by the wayside; it’s just that I’ve suddenly realized how very much, come hell or high water, I’m about to get done.

It happens every couple of weeks: my ability to do work sinks downward, until I’m convinced that I’m the least productive human being, ever. Then, suddenly, I kick into efficiency hyperdrive, finishing weeks of work in the span of two or three super-focused days. I alternate between thinking: 1. If I were this productive all the time, I could single-handedly change the world, solving seemingly intractable problems such as world hunger and Rush Limbaugh. 2. On the other hand, if I were this productive all the time, I wouldn’t have time to keep up my serious alcoholism.

At which point, I usually head out for a drink.

You catch yourself dialing ‘9’ before numbers on your home phone.

1256 email messages, 46 voice mail messages. And I was out of the office for only four days. Shoot me now.

Despite extant piles of work from each of my multiple jobs, all of which need completion before I head off to the Bahamas this weekend, I spent most of the morning accomplishing essentially nothing. A fifteen minute sample:

10:45-10:48 – Stare at screen blankly, fidget in chair.
10:48-10:51 – Trip to the bathroom.
10:51-10:54 – Stop to bother secretary on the way back.
10:54-10:56 – Check email, stare blankly at screen again, fidget.
10:56-10:57 – Read a few news stories at Wired and Slashdot.
10:57-11:00 – Wander around office, trying to look purposeful.

The entire morning (from 8:00 to 12:00) followed about the same pattern. I think I have ADHD.

No, really. According to the DSM-IV (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – Fourth Edition, for the uneducated), ADHD consists of three composite traits: inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. And I hit the key symptoms for each:

Inattention
often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, work, or other activities;
often dislikes or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained concentration;
is often forgetful in daily activities.

Hyperactivity
often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat;
often leaves seat in classroom or in other situations in which remaining seated is expected;
is often “on the go;”
often talks excessively.

Impulsivity
often blurts out answers before questions have been completed;
often interrupts or intrudes on others (e.g., butts into conversations or games).

Which, basically, describes me to a ‘T.’ Where do I get my Ritalin?

Years ago, my father shared with me a life lesson that, at the time, I didn’t fully appreciate. He had discovered, he told me, that one’s workload was a bit like the tides. Sometimes it was low tide, sometimes high tide. But he had always been waiting for no water, and he realized that just wasn’t going to happen.

In months like this one, I think about the tides. Too much time on the road, too much time with the flu, too much work piling up and not nearly enough sleep. To-do lists that spill over page after page. In months like this one, I think about the tides, and I think about another lesson he taught me, in regards to the fine art of surfing. Sometimes, he said, you can head out for an afternoon, miss all the good sets, get tossed around by the surf, and barely catch a single wave. And it’s on those days, during the highest tide, when you can best sit back and think how lucky you are just to be out there, going for a paddle.