{"id":259,"date":"2005-06-14T15:46:40","date_gmt":"2005-06-14T15:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/wp\/?p=259"},"modified":"2013-03-07T18:03:50","modified_gmt":"2013-03-08T02:03:50","slug":"email_habits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/email_habits\/","title":{"rendered":"Email Habits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I often wonder what I do all day in front of the computer. For now I&#8217;ll just take a quick look at my email habits. I spend a lot time writing them.<br \/>\nMy sent folder tells me <strong>I&#8217;ve fired off over 1,000 emails since Jan. 1, 2005<\/strong>, half of which are recreational: planning rides with friends, swapping links, catching up with the Moms.<br \/>\nThe remaining half of my sent mail is work-related. It looks like 250 of them are the usual back-and-forth project correspondence: lists of changes for a website, confirmations and questions&#8211;all boring but essential stuff.<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s the remaining 250 emails that I&#8217;m really interested in. These are the letters of introductions to new clients, discussions with designers, mailing list posts, networking, tips and tutorials for friends. I consider this all work in the sense that I&#8217;m producing something valuable, making an investment and learning something new.<br \/>\nThey aren&#8217;t work in the sense that I get paid by the hour for them, or that they&#8217;re a chore. I think these emails probably account for a good 10 hours a week of my time, but I think of them as <em>good practice<\/em>, as <em>investments<\/em>.<br \/>\nThey are good practice in that I make a point of using proper grammar, spelling, i.e. coherent English, something I&#8217;ve tried to keep on top of since my professional writing days. It&#8217;s a constant challenge to write at the right level, balancing clarity, scope and brevity.<br \/>\nA novice web designer friend wants to know how to optimize a new site for search engines, or I want to ask an established designer for advice on choosing a school. For the former I need to be descriptive enough to offer concrete and manageable advice while the latter would likely appreciate succinctness, some background and enthusiasm.<br \/>\nI&#8217;m interested in communicating as effectively as possible. It&#8217;s embarrassing how long I&#8217;ll spend writing and rewriting, researching and confirming a three-paragraph email. But it gets easier, in a way; or rather, the quality improves. That&#8217;s the investment. <strong>It&#8217;s a good habit to write good email<\/strong>.<br \/>\nI&#8217;ve never managed my time well, but I&#8217;m still working, even if it isn&#8217;t for money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I often wonder what I do all day in front of the computer. For now I&#8217;ll just take a quick look at my email habits. I spend a lot time writing them. My sent folder tells me I&#8217;ve fired off over 1,000 emails since Jan. 1, 2005, half of which are recreational: planning rides with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[74],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1369,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions\/1369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}