#emailLess

Here’s where I’ll be tracking progress and updates on my 40-day email-less challenge. (latest post first)

Log: March 3rd, 2013, 4:53 PM – My ban on email ending today, on a Sunday of all days.  Reasons a plenty, but mainly there was too many conversations taking place and important decisions being made that I had no voice in.  Ultimately, that did me in.  Made it 18 days, 21 hours and 50 minutes.

Log: Feb 28, 2013, 9:37 PM – End of the month and I’ve run into some more “encounters” about people not being too pleased with my non-email Lent idea.  Starting to feel bad again for making people work to get in touch with me.  Some are opting to ask others (who in turn, text or tweet me)  Alas, you can’t change everyone.  Numbers for today: 91 unread emails, 53 non-email interactions.

Log: Feb 27, 2013, 11:06 PM – Wow! Either people have figured this out or the fact I’m out on paternity leave is keeping people from emailing me.  My unread email total for today was 67, by far the lowest of any work day.  My total interactions were 48.  Back to work tomorrow for a little bit, but pretty much full-time by Monday.

Log: Feb 26, 2013, 9:43 PM – 100 unread emails, 55 non-email interactions. Two weeks in the books.  Here are the top 5 after two weeks:

Twitter: 221

Facebook: 208 

Face to Face: 154 (was in first until I went out for paternity leave)

Text: 111 

Phone: 50

There’s a clear drop off from the “big 4” and it started out as the “big 3” until Facebook made a furious comeback thanks to my ADE announcement followed 12 hours later with the birth of my third daughter.

Log: Feb 25, 2013, 9:25 PM – It’s Monday and I’m not back at work.  Still trying to figure out how to get 3 little kids to sleep at the same time.  Looks like overall counts are down, but I wasn’t able to interact as much via the non-email ways today (although I did quite a bit of texting).  Count = 93 unread email, 41 non-email interactions.

Forgot to post this yesterday, but here’s milestone moment on my iPhone:

Log: Feb 24, 2013, 10:05 PM – Sunday counts – Unread email = 27, non-email interactions = 65 (with Facebook making  a furious run at first place).  Oh and Undead killed = 3. #TheWalkingDead

Log: Feb 24, 2013, 11:25 AM – Tired and sleep-deprived.  I actually backed into my mother-in-law’s car in the driveway yesterday.  The weekend is here which means less email and less communication.  Totals = 22 unread email, 32 non-email interactions.

Log: Feb 22, 2013 – 8:45 PM – Back from the hospital, still off of email, but I did slip up and announce my daughter’s birth over email.   Totals today = 110 unread email and 61 non-email interactions (including 2 letters!).  Side-note: I discounted all tweets pertaining to my obsession with the #harlemshake.

Log: Feb 21, 2013 – 10:28 PM – Downward trend continues as more and more people find other ways to contact me.  Today’s numbers: Unread email = 79, non-email interactions = 78.  Facebook has shot up the leaderboard into 2nd place (behind twitter and ahead of F2F).

Log: Feb 21, 2013 – 1:47 PM – Able to “participate” briefly in our Ed Tech meeting today via Google Docs.  Nice to watch the brainstorming happening on my screen while my daughter rests in my arm. Not the same as being there, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to hold Caroline 🙂

Log: Feb 20, 2013 – 10:25 PM – On thing is obvious, life events can greatly alter your interactions.  Especially on Facebook. My numbers for today: 88 unread emails (crediting this to my new auto-response) and 144 non-email interactions (crediting this for my two big life events.  Not including “likes” on Facebook, I had 67 interactions via comment, by far the record for me.

Log: Feb 20, 2013 – 1:35 PM – Add Google Hangouts to the list!  Had to give a preso to 50 folks visiting our Middle School today, but as you can tell by my previous log entry, our family had other plans.  Enter Google Hangout: Was able to give the presentation, show our 10-hour old child, and share my screen with the audience, all from the comforts of the postpartum room.

Log: Feb 20, 2013 – 4:04 AM – Baby Caroline (our third child) is born!  Immediately changed auto-response to “Paternity leave”

Log: Feb 19, 2013 – 8:47 PM – What a day! Finally getting around to posting my week one results.

Log: Feb 19, 2013 – 5:14 PM – Broke my no email rule for a moment  when I started getting texts and tweets about getting accepted or rejected into Apple Distinguished Educators.  I made it! But I also had to check my email to see that…

Log: Feb 19, 2013 – 7:49 AM – Off all technology this morning as I work with on of our elementary campuses on their 1:1 roll-out of iPads!

Log: Feb 18, 2013 – 8:35 AM – Yesterday was a day of rest, so I stayed off of everything as much as I could.  Numbers were as follows – 20 non-email interactions, 32 unread emails. 

Log: Feb 16,2013 – 9:07 PM – Today the doubts really started creeping in.  Not sure how long I’ll make it.  Good news is with a baby on the way next week, I’ll probably still be off email.  Today’s numbers- 14 non-email interactions, 33 unread emails.

Log: Feb 15, 2013 – 8:58 PM – Forgot today’s count – Total email is 436 – Today I had 72 non-email interactions and 128 unread email.  At least that number is going down.  Top three today – F2f = 22, Twitter =16, Dispatch =11.  I did get my first letter though, but was a printed off email 🙁

Log: Feb 15, 2013 – 8:55 PM– Made it to the 3-day weekend with a lot to ponder. 1 – Since Sundays are not a part of lent, I’m wondering if I should go in and play catch-up?  Or is that work which means I should be resting?  2 – How much trouble am I getting in for this and is it all worth it.  I think it is and will continue, but I need to figure out a way to optimize the system going forward.

Log: Feb 15, 2013 – 2:12PM – Got to teacher a class of 1st graders how to use iMovie on their iPads.  They each made movies about themselves with pictures, narration, theme music and special effects.  All in one hour! (needed this)

Log: Feb 15, 2013 – 11:33AM –Some bumpy water as it was brought to my attention the trouble that people are having to go through to get in touch with me. Amazing how one minute this can go from a movement to is it even worth doing…

Log: Feb 15, 2013 – 10:53AM – Total email up to 375.  Just got approached by someone in our district who told me she thought about what I’m doing with no email last night. She thinks it would be a great idea if we all took a day every month or so to be “off email” and increase our face-to-face time with our district. Is this a movement starting?

Log: Feb 14,2013 – 8:51PM – Counts are in for day 2.  86 total non-email interactions and 197 unread emails today.   Top 3 for today keep up with a trend from yesterday.  Face-to-face in first place with 26 interactions.  Twitter in second place with 19, and texting is now third with 16.  Overall totals has face-to-face and Twitter in a 2-way race.

Log: Feb 14, 2013 – 10:11 AM – Day 2 is off and running. Feel a lot better today but know that email count is growing.  Trying to organize my screen in the best way when I’m in the office.  Here’s what it currently looks like and what I have running.  Need to optimize here:

Log: Feb 13, 2013 – 8:28 PM – Posted Day 1 Reflection HERE.

Log: Feb. 13, 2013 – 1:13PM – Half-way through my work day and I can already tell this is going to be a much bigger challenge than I thought.  I just scattered communication across multiple different avenues which means I’m now checking all of those different ways. I’ve got to work on an efficient way to have some up and some not up. Maybe just Twitter and chat to start.

Log: Feb. 12, 2013 – 11:04 pm – Just emptied out my inbox in anticipation.  While I have 4 primary email accounts, my work one gets the most stuff in it.  I’m starting them all at zero as of midnight.  Most work was archived, forwarded, sent to Google Docs or added to a calendar event.

Here’s a screen shot of my current empty inbox – It’s a thing of beauty –

Prediction: my work email will reach 7000 emails in 40 days.