The Path of Least Resistance via Aaron Mahnke
I drink from the information fire-hose each and every day. I sift through thousands of RSS feeds a week, see countless links float down my twitter stream, and dozens of items are added to my Instapaper bucket on a weekly basis, many with secondary links to other great content. It’s all I can do to keep up.
Don’t get me wrong; I love doing this. I find that the right information can help me grow, enrich my life and offer new inspiration to my role as a creative professional. So many times I will come across links or articles that I need to act upon. Maybe it’s a new web app that I could see making my design business easier to run, or a cool office supply idea that I’d like to read more about. If I’m on my desktop or laptop, it’s easy to go deeper by just opening Safari and reading more about these things.
But I’m not always at a desk. And when I’m away from my work machines, I’m often just not in a position to research the link in the moment. So I have needed a solution to “marking” something for future interaction.
Shawn Blanc wrote about his own battle with this issue back in August. His solution was to create an email address that was easy to type on any mobile device using a string of the same letter (tttt in this case) which takes advantage of the iOS’s auto-complete abilities. And as this seemed like the easiest solution to implement, requiring no new software or major changes to my work-flow, I essentially copied him. Now, when I encounter an item online that I wish to dig deeper into at a later time, I simply email the link to my Task email address. And while not every app has brought Instapaper integration to their list of supported services, every app I use to manage the “fire-hose” has an option to email a link. Simple. Frictionless. Perfect for me.
The email account is only set up on my desktop and laptop, since having the links that I can’t investigate on my mobile devices sent to my mobile devices would be missing the point. So those emails only ever show up on my work machines. And even there, the emails are set to be immediately filed away in a Tasks folder and left unread. So now, once a week or so, I open Mail.app and filter through my Tasks folder.
Now, my Task items are of a certain category. They are items I don’t have to do right now. And if I forget about the links and a week or two goes by, I’m not effected in anyway. They have no deadline and are not time sensitive. Send and forget. And I’ve happily used this system for a few months with a warm sense of relief and calm that everything I want to mark for future interaction is neatly stored away and available.
But there are times when that category doesn’t apply to a link or item. I might not necessarily want an item in my work or personal email inbox, but it also has a certain level of urgency. On rare occasions this is a work-related item, like a note from SimpleNote that I need in my face and available immediately. So in this case, I’ll just email it to my work account. But 95% of the time it’s an article I’d like to write a response to, or add my thoughts, or kneed into the dough of a current piece I’m baking (hungry now, aren’t you?).
As simple as it sounds, my solution has been to just create a new email address. I’ve used the same idea of repeating letters (this time it’s bbbb) and now have a Blogs email address that I can push items over to. These are set to stay in my inbox (work computers only), but I have created a rule to color them grey so they stand out. And do you know what? It’s awesome.
Not everyone has the same needs as me, or the same categories. But the core journey here has been about removing the friction between Point A and Point B, and that can relate to everyone. Find that problem that’s been niggling you for a while, and then find the best way to reduce the friction. That’s usually the best way to remove the frustration. Contrary to the laws of nature, when it comes to daily productivity tasks, the path of least resistance is rarely the natural choice. But if we are going to improve how we do things, we have to actively think about it and chase down the right solution.
