The Yesterbox blog post (Hi, Tony, are you reading this?!) got a lot of traction. People are INTO it. I’m into it. Ron G., a principal in New Orleans, is into it. He also takes it one step further by adding in Inbox Pause, a button to help you control when messages appear in your Gmail inbox. Let’s take a look:
Ron reports,
I like the idea of being able to ‘pause’ my email until the next chunk of time I have blocked out to check it. It really helps me stay focused on implementing my Yesterbox strategy.
Here is where you find the button after you download Inbox Pause.
As many of you know, I remain a fan of Outlook because it is so easy to work offline. Why do I like to work offline, you may ask? Because I am very distracted by my Feedly reader, online shopping for light fixtures, and basically anything but finishing my book manuscript (which, P.S., is now 80,000 words and turned into Jossey-Bass for a first review…woot woot!). Offline mode is also very helpful for cranking through replies while riding in various planes, trains and automobiles. But now you Gmail users can “pause” your inboxes to achieve close-to-offline-nirvana too!
Of course, all of these fixes can be substituted at any time with that good old-fashioned sense of discipline called “don’t check your email all the time.” But I am not that strong a woman. Yet.
As for Ron’s next frontier: He plans to share his new methods with his team, so they understand what’s going on and he can get some relief from feeling like he always has to check his email. Yes, yes, yes! The email beast is never tamed through just one person’s behavior – it takes clear communication and group commitment.
