Returning to work after a short term illness, What are your productivity hacks?

  • 🐕 I am attempting to get the site runnning as fast as possible. If you are experiencing slow page load times, please report it.
Tiggletown

Tiggletown

Not Suicidal
kiwifarms.net
Joined
Apr 25, 2020
Took a week and a half off work for a stomach virus, Full disconnect, mostly sleeping in the bathroom to not wake the wife constantly. I work for a small company that's in commercial real estate, I don't have a boss I have unlimited PTO basically so none of that is a concern.

This morning I drank my bland diet approved hydration shake and opened up my laptop to be greeted with 1,150 emails from my time off, Since I don't have a team it's not like anyone was covering my slack while I was gone so all of this is just sitting here.

Kiwis what are your suggestions to topple a mountain of Email? I'm thinking of taking the morning to prune them down but it's hard to start the climb of this electronic Everest.

No NEETS please.
 
  • Feels
Reactions: dead76, WTBOnlineFather, Super Dilator Duel 3D and 3 others
Keep a bucket nearby because you never know. Have a couple of icees or drink lots of hot tea. Ginger is also pretty good for helping the stomach.

I find if you try to remove a lot of the flem and get oxygen to your brain it helps you think better. Usually if I’m sick I take my inhaler because it opens my lungs more. You would be surprised how much your brain doesn’t want to think on a lack of oxygen. (Unless this is just food borne Illnesses and your not hacking up the office) goodspeed Spider-Man
 
  • Like
  • Feels
  • Informative
Reactions: dead76, Super Dilator Duel 3D, Neo-Nazi Rich Evans and 3 others
Tiggletown said:
Kiwis what are your suggestions to topple a mountain of Email?
Click to expand...
Delete them all.

In seriousness, you're gonna have to look at all of them and get funky with organisation. Sort them by day you received them, or divide the count by a number small enough for semi-frequent breaks for your sanity but large enough they're managable in your head.
1150 / 25 emails = 46 batches of emails, you get the idea.

Better yet, you're gonna look at all of them anyway, so basically open them up, scan the mail as quick as your brain and eyes let you and scrungly shove them into folders based on "this is baby shit" and "fuck i might lose my job if I don't do this".

It will look insurmountable if they're all left in your inbox, you need to divide and conquer in some way.
 
  • Like
  • Informative
Reactions: dead76, pork and beans, Existential MD and 5 others
Tiggletown said:
Kiwis what are your suggestions to topple a mountain of Email?
Click to expand...

Pop caffeine if you can't drink it and start at the very bottom. Spend a few seconds per email to see if it's even important or pertains to you; if it does, either flag it or open it in a new window and just keep going through your list.

Once that god awful 1.1k email number is gone, you can focus on catching back up and replying to any emails you actually need to.
 
  • Informative
  • Like
Reactions: judegdubey, dead76, Existential MD and 4 others
I agree with the most above, just delete all the unread emails and ask your Manager if there were any urgent talks you need to look into now.

Grub said:
I dunno I don't get time off when I'm sick. I was sick and had a bruised rib last week stuck up in an attic for like 5 or 6 hours.
Click to expand...
That sucks, I know how you feel. Some managers are not capable of the positions they hold, so they don't allow their team members to take off.
 
  • Like
Reactions: eatler
Don't know if this will work for your workflow, but you could sort by sender and read the most recent email from everyone first. Likely it'll summarize everything else they've been emailing to your dead mailbox for the last week, or at least let you know what their priority for you is.
 
  • Like
  • Agree
Reactions: Chongqing, eatler and KittyGremlin
It may sound counter-productive but you may want to *not* drink caffeine or energy drinks for this. These things are good when you want a burst of energy in the short term and plan to keep it chill for the rest of the day, but the overall amount of work you get done may be lower. I'd say, get a bit of overtime and evenly pace yourself through the day. It seems to be the best strat for me at least.

Good luck with the pile OP.
 
  • Like
  • Agree
Reactions: Metatron, eatler and Aunt Carol
Tiggletown said:
Kiwis what are your suggestions to topple a mountain of Email? I'm thinking of taking the morning to prune them down but it's hard to start the climb of this electronic Everest.
Click to expand...

You'll have a lot of shit in there, find senders from marketing / status notifications search them all and delete them, Use this function if your in a email chain https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...look-365/73fab0b2-9a45-458e-9add-2ec10cf0c144

Other than that it's just going through a churn mate.
 
  • Like
Reactions: eatler
Don’t be afraid to take breaks between batches of emails. That’s basic bitch advice but the worry of needing to constantly be getting shit sorted through can make the task even more miserable than usual.

I agree with the music and caffeine tablet suggestions as well. Just don’t put anything off or the pile will grow and you’ll hate yourself later.
 
amphetamines or if you want to be like john mcafee you could try methylenedioxypyrovalerone
 
99% of urgent emails are useless if they have been left unread for 2 days. If anyone bitches, your health was more important than their problem. Spend 30 minutes in the morning responding to anything important for the last 3 days. If your team is small, ask if anything interesting happened. Do your job, and take a 15 minute break in between your tasks every 45 minutes to wipe out the useless stuff. You'll be done by the end of the day, and have some progress to motivate you.

T. Neet
 
  • Informative
Reactions: Cowboy Christ
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back