I previously posted a short set of notes of how I apply my simple process of digesting emails. However, I think there are some other important rules of when to produce email. In this short post, I will share a couple things to keep in mind before you send an email. Email is where your keystrokes go to dieSeveral years back, I watched this talk by Scott Hanselman on Scaling Yourself, which touches on several topics on how to improve your productivity.

The pptx LanguageA few months ago, I was speaking with a senior member of our engineering leadership team, and he stated that the only language he has been coding in lately, is pptx (referring to the file extension of Microsoft PowerPoint). While this statement was delivered with humor, I found it to be true with many engineers. As they grew with experience, so did the amount of time they spent giving presentations.

Over the course of my engineering career, I have seen and participated in different types of team traditions. Team traditions can help build the identity or brand of a team, which is generally helpful in supporting the overall health of the team. By having a team which has a unique and strong identity, it many times indicates a strong connective bond between the team members. As the lifespan of a team grows over time, traditions can continue to form which further crystalize these unique elements of their identity.

As I talk with other engineers, I have found a common question that typically arises on “How do you make time to stay current on technology?” Other flavors of the same question are, “What podcasts do you listen to?”, or “How do you find technical articles that are good to read?” While I seek these same things, I find that many times people do not often talk about how can they optimize how their brain can process the things they have been learning.

As I have explored ways to be more productive, I generally find that everyone has a way in which they process their emails. Given that email is such a common element of communication that everyone deals with, and it has been around for a long time, there are generally several different ways of optimizing this continuous amount of content. Here is my process of how I manage my email at work, which I realize is quite simple.