Silence is Golden

In a previous post, "The Tech That Saved Our Marriage," I talked about the solution for my snoring that enabled my wife to get a good night's sleep and prevented me from becoming a punching bag at night. I'm no neuroscientist, but it's interesting to me how in certain states we are more susceptible to noticing (and being annoyed) by sounds.

In the thankfully rare situations where I experience insomnia, I can hear every tick-tock of the clock and the hum of the air conditioner is a jet engine. When I was in school studying for finals, other's laptop keys sounded like spiteful castanets. Today, whether at work or home, the challenge is creating a cone of silence for when I need to do deeper or more creative thinking.

Here are some EZPZ silence solutions I recommend.

1. Headphones. Let's start with the most common and obvious one. Pump in some music (for me, music without words) and you are good to go. Use sparingly to protect your hearing and to not tune out too much. 

2. Move it! When faced with an unrelenting force like a spirited child or raucous co-workers, sometimes the best move is to actually move somewhere else for a bit. Your car, a coffee shop, a conference room or any other convenient destination.

3. Switch it! If you know the noisy condition is temporary and you have the option, switch to a task that you can do in spite of the noise or perhaps one that is enhanced by the noise. 

Finally, you could always opt for the approach taken by Charlie's father in So I Married an Axe Murderer, "SHUT IT!" I think the scenarios where this works in the long run are few, no matter what your role, but just wanted to mention it.

Happy Concentrating! 

Upward Mobility

I am suffering from some serious Game of Thrones withdrawal. This speech by Littlefinger reminds me of a great piece of advice I received long ago from a Third Circuit judge. My summer job was in Trenton interning for a N.J. District court judge and she arranged for us to have lunch with her colleague. This gentleman left quite an impression on the four first-year law students. He could still remember the most minute details of cases he had decided years before like the name of the witness' dog. We were just soaking in his stories and bits of wisdom. But it was his parting words that left the biggest impression. 

He said he understood that we were all ambitious and wanted to advance our careers. And he knew that we would have battles along the way and would sometimes have to push others down as we climbed the ladder. But he reminded us the legal community is small and that sometimes you will find your positions reversed, so never screw anybody extra.

Fix an email fiasco BEFORE it happens - using time travel!

Picture this. It's late afternoon, you're buried under a mountain of work and you are feeling like Rocky looks in Round 12. You're probably hungry and thirsty, too, but you don't realize it and haven't taken a break in a while.  

Then, an upsetting email comes in and boom, Krakatoa! How dare he/she? Now you are in full S.W.A.T. mode and you return fire via a less than professional email (e.g., nasty, passive agressive, outright aggressive, or sarastic - pick your poison) that you would not have written under better conditions. As soon as you click "Send," probably not more than 10 seconds later, you regret it. But like that time you said those words you wish you could pull back, it's too late - or is it?

I came across a great little set-it-and-forget-it hack on HBR that can gives you Doctor Who-like powers to travel back in time. By setting all your outgoing emails on a 2 minute delay, you can go back and revise or delete any emails after you've pressed "Send," but before they are actually sent.

EZPZ Email Time Travel

1.   Go to the “Home” tab and click on “Rules”

2.   Click “Manage Rules and Alerts”

3.   Under “Email Rules” click “New Rule” and under “Start from a blank rule” click on “Apply rule on messages I send.” Click “Next,” (you don’t need to choose any conditions), and click “Next” again.

4. Check “Defer delivery by _ minutes” and fill in the blank.

5. Click “Next,” then, click “Next,” again and last click “Finish.”

Now test this by sending yourself an email. You should see it hanging out in your Outbox for 2 minutes before it is sent. Now you can go into your Outbox and delete or revise a nuclear email. Other useful scenarios include adding a person or attachment you forgot or when you realize you didn't read all the emails in the chain.

The well-written HBR article on this by Katie Smith Milway (@KatieSMilway) has additional information for different versions of Outlook or for Gmail users. Check it out!