Gordon Murray

I’ve been getting involved in a few great projects recently such as being one of 3 organizers for Cork Open Coffee, helping out with the Tuesday Push and helping out with the recent Jobless and Proud website on top of my usual work. I’m thoroughly enjoying these and I’m learning to fit them all in.

As well as this, I’m making more time for developing our own eWrite software and business rather than always reacting to our customers latest needs or any problems.

My worst habit is checking my email. I check my emails too often on top of the auto retrieve functionality in Thunderbird. At first I deleted the shortcuts to Thunderbird and disabled the email button on my keyboard which my hand always seems to travel to on its own. I pretty much cut myself off from my emails for certain periods of time.

After a day or two of this I realized I needed my emails to be open to go back and get information from them from time to time. I re-enabled the email button on the keyboard but turned off the auto retrieve facility which gets new emails on starting the programme. I also stopped it from getting new emails every half hour.

I’ve been following a strict schedule all last week, its working out incredibly well for me. I don’t think I’ve ever had the opportunity to work on any one thing without being interrupted by long phone calls or even being called away for meetings which eats up such a tonne of time.

My morning is my most productive time. I start with a list of items put together either the night before or first thing in the morning. I do not check my emails first thing anymore. From 8am to 10.30am I work on my to-do list and get a lot done. My emails remain unchecked and the phones are off.

At 10.30 I turn on the phone, check any messages, return calls if needed for the first time of the day. I check my emails, reply if I can and sometimes take a couple of minutes to check out Twitter while I’m at it. The rest of the day is broken up in a similar manner with periods of dedicated work and periods where I continue to work but with time for calls and emails. It works out at approx 7 hours of dedicated work time and 3 hours of open time to respond to calls and emails each day.

I imagine I’m probably pissing one or two people off by not being at the other end of the phone or emails whenever Im needed. I still feel guilty and annoyed when I turn on my phone to see 8 or 9 missed calls from someone.

I’ll continue to work like this and I’m still learning how to fit in meetings or continue to work with co-workers smoothly. I’m also thinking is this a way of cutting myself off from opportunities or items that need a quick response. Maybe I could get a virtual assistant to check my emails for me and talk on Twitter on my behalf. Any opportunities I may get from communicating with others won’t amount to much anyway unless I keep to a structure like this to get things done.

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business by Gordon Murray