How to Achieve Inbox Zero

Introduction

In last week’s post I made the case for Inbox Zero: that is, for being so on top of your email that your inbox is virtually empty (say, a dozen or fewer emails). To recap, Inbox Zero is about being more effective with email, meaning you’ll possibly read less of it, definitely re-read much less of it, and stop missing important emails because they were buried under all the unimportant ones. The goal is to make better use of our time, so that we spend less of it doing email. In this post, I am going to explain exactly how to achieve and maintain Inbox Zero, based on how I’ve managed it for the last several years.

[A note on the art above: a concerned reader was aghast at my use of A.I. to create the art for last week’s post. She was so keen to keep it real, she created this original art just for me—and you.]

One prerequisite

There is an important prerequisite to achieving Inbox Zero, at least the way I do it: you have to use Gmail as your email interface. This doesn’t mean you have to use a Gmail account. (More on this later.) Now, I’m not some major Google fanboy, and they didn’t sponsor or promote this post (or this blog) in any way. Google makes its money through ads, and I’m not big on advertising. I also don’t appreciate how their YouTube algorithm tried to addict me to sexy yoga videos. Moreover, I bristled at the original Gmail because the consumer version, when it came out, had ads that were generated based on its bot reading the email message content. This so unnerved me, I created a technique to stymie it. But Google eventually ditched the ads, probably after reading this blog and realizing I was right. (Yes, that was a joke.) But now I’m sold on Gmail.

When my employer switched to Google Workspace, and Gmail became a part of my daily life, I realized not only that its conversation view is much more efficient, but that the use of labels instead of folders makes all kinds of sense. In fact, labels are the key to maintaining Inbox Zero. So if you’re still committed to using Outlook, this post isn’t going to be of much help.

If you don’t use Gmail, don’t stop reading! If you’re not among the 76% of Americans use Gmail for their personal email, you can still keep your Yahoo or Hotmail account, and set up the Gmail interface (both on your laptop and your Android app) to pull in email from either (or both) of those platforms. The Gmail interface works great for my personal email (which is on my own domain, via the Yahoo/Turbify platform), along with my Gmail, of course. It’s nice to get everything in one place.

(I’m not going to explain how to port your Yahoo or Hotmail over to Gmail … that kind of task is what ChatGPT is for. It did a great job guiding me through the process. When one of its instructions doesn’t work—which will happen, as these interfaces undergo minor changes all the time—ChatGPT can course-correct very well. In fact, if you told ChatGPT, “I am having trouble with the POP3 settings because my neighbor is having a huge party and they’re making too much noise,” GPT will help by asking, “Would you like me to draft a speech or brief note that you can present to ask them to quiet down?” And if upon reading this draft you respond, “The note needs to be shorter and more emphatic because I want to write it in Sharpie on my husband’s bare chest,” GPT will accommodate that request as well. So, you may now wonder, why wouldn’t you just ask ChatGPT how to get to Inbox Zero? The answer is, because it’s only really good at rote technical configurations, not at strategy. Yet.)

My Inbox Zero strategy

As with all techniques for everything, there are five steps to reaching and maintaining Inbox Zero. No, this methodology won’t get you to where you literally have zero emails in your inbox, but when you start doing start-of-day triage and some catch-up throughout the day, you’ll get to where most of the time you’ll have relatively few. The crucial thing is to have no more  in your inbox than Gmail’s first page can display. The default is 50 threads. Anything that doesn’t fit on this first page is guaranteed to be neglected, because the chances of you ever seeing it are negligible. (Sure, you could find those emails with the search feature, but how will you know to search if you don’t know the email exists? Do you routinely search on “invoice past due”? Or are you waiting for someone to say, “What? You didn’t see my email?” so you can search on their address?)

With no further ado, here are the steps.

Step #1 – Create a few filters and a couple of new labels

This step is mainly necessary for your work email, and is optional if you work for a small business. But if you work for a large corporation, you surely get a ton of email that’s broadcast daily from HR, your marketing department, news feeds, vendors, and various other non-personal sources. You are generally not expected to respond to these emails, so they should definitely be considered lower priority. They shouldn’t compete for precious visible-inbox real estate with any email that a human took some trouble writing.

Thus, you should create filters that target the daily all-hands update emails and filter them out such that they don’t even hit your inbox. Since these messages are not as useless as direct marketing solicitations, you’ll want to also label them (automatically!) in case you need to find them later. Figure out how many labels you need: you might have a “Corp updates” label and another for “Industry news,” or you might just have a catch-all for “Bulletins etc.” Now, I know filtering out emails so they never hit your inbox can seem scary, but bear in mind two things. One, if you haven’t been doing Inbox Zero, lot of emails have always been invisible to you anyway, by being buried among others and/or not on the first page of your inbox. Two, you can always peek at the mass of unfiltered emails by clicking the “All Mail” link down the left of your screen:

(If you don’t see this “All Mail” link it’s because Gmail has hidden it; click the “More” link to expose it. In the snapshot at left, the view is expanded so there’s a “Less” link; that’s where the “More” link would be shown if this view were collapsed.)

For your personal email, the first filter should get rid of unasked-for solicitations like the daily email you get from Speedo because you once bought that bathing suit from them (you know, the one that didn’t even fit so you returned it). Filter out all these quasi-spammers—the companies you did choose to do business with who are now like remoras. (Myself, I have a Hotmail account that I use for all e-commerce so I can more easily ignore that spam. If I need to file a receipt I log into the Hotmail, find it, and forward it to my personal email. Otherwise I ignore Hotmail entirely; it’s at Inbox 48,376.)

With these various filters in place, at least you’ve somewhat mitigated the fusillade of daily emails, hopefully reducing it to under fifty so that facing your Inbox for daily triage will be less daunting.

Next, if this is your work email, create a label that is your boss’s name, and set up a filter that applies this label to each of this person’s emails to you—without removing the email from your Inbox. Make this a bold, perhaps red label. If you’re lucky and your boss is named Aaron, this label will automatically show up at the top of your list of labels (which is also your list of folders … more on this later). If your boss’s name isn’t Aaron, put an underscore character at the beginning to move it up. Going forward, instead of starting your workday by perusing your inbox, you can start in your “Boss” folder (or, if your emails don’t pile up too fast, you can still start in the inbox and just look for that bright red label.) The idea here is that the very first emails you should read are the ones from the person who has direct influence on your salary. In the below example, the person’s boss is named Zoe, so two underscore characters are required.

You’ll also want to create a label called “_Follow-up.” Make this a bright color, too. The underscore character before the “F” is to move this label to(ward) the top of the list. The “_Follow-up” label is important for both your work and personal email … more on this later.

Does it make sense to automatically flag emails from your spouse, the way you did with your boss? Perhaps, but only if you get a lot of email from him or her. (Mine just yells across the house, like me.)

Again, ChatGPT can walk you through how to set up the actual filters and create and color-code the labels. All kinds of helpful people have already documented this process in various forums etc., so ChatGPT can research and distill that process for you.

Step #2: Clean slate

Obviously if you’re currently buried in thousands of emails after years of neglect, you’ll need to start with something other than mere triage … it’s a little late for that. To achieve a clean slate, take a deep breath and ask yourself what the odds are that you’re really going to ever read emails 51 through 25,359 in your inbox. Once you have accepted that the answer is “hell no,” you need to just archive them all, in one fell swoop. First navigate to your inbox. Then find the little checkbox just below the “Search mail” field at the top of the Gmail interface. If you hover your cursor over it, a tool-tip will appear that says “Select.” Check that box to select the first 50 emails, or better yet, accept the offer to select all 25,359 of them (i.e., however many you have total). Then click the icon next to the checkbox that looks like a folder with a down-arrow on it, as shown below. This will archive all selected messages, which means they’ll no longer be in your inbox. Where do they go? Into the ether. Probably the same place electricity goes when you turn out the light. They’re still on the mail server, though, and you can still see them by selecting “All Mail” as described above. But you don’t need to see them. They’re dead to you. Get on with your life.

[A note on the screenshots in this post: some are a bit hard to read. Click on a picture to enlarge it.]

The only problem with that mass archival is that nothing is labeled, so it’ll be hard to find past emails. That’s the consequence of waiting this long to get organized. Proper implementation of Inbox Zero means being organized going forward, not just clutter-free. Thus, once you have zero emails in your inbox (or maybe half a dozen new emails since they continuously pop up out of nowhere), you need to do regular triage on all the new stuff.

Step #3: Triage and pre-labeling

Okay, let’s assume you now have a clean slate and an inbox that doesn’t represent years of neglect. When you open Gmail first thing in the morning, you’ll likely still see dozens of emails, and you’ll start to panic, but don’t. Just follow these rules in making your way through the pile.

Start with the boss. Remember that new filter you created that automatically labels emails from your boss? Read those first. (If this is your personal email, and you created a rule to automatically flag messages from, say, your kid who’s a terrified college freshman, start with those.)

Jettison spam. If you see spam or quasi-spam messages, delete them on sight. You can go down the list of threads selecting all the chaff via the checkbox, then click the garbage can icon on your toolbar. This is incredibly satisfying. If you’re seeing a lot of spam from a single source, create a filter to kill it off forever. (Zap Zappos! See ya later, Speedo!)

(I had to cheat with the snapshot above … that’s a view of the Promotions tab, where Gmail automatically moves the quasi-spam solicitations. If you don’t see inbox tabs like Promotions, Social, and Updates, enable them in Settings/Categories.)

Scan for important messages first. Scan through the subject lines for anything that looks important, like one from a friend you’re making plans with, or a work colleague you’re knee-deep in a project with, or a thread you’ve been working that has new activity, and open that first. Scanning never worked before, because you had too many emails. Now it’s actually a reasonable way to triage.

Pre-label your threads. For every email you open, all you’re doing right now is skimming it to judge its level of importance, and—crucially—labeling it. This is the most important rule: don’t wait until later to “file” it. Label it now, and it’ll kind of almost be filed already. (More on the “why” of this in a minute.) Note that you’re not moving this using the very obvious button on the tool bar (i.e., the one shown below). That will remove the thread from your inbox. You want to label it while leaving it in the inbox, for this triage phase.

Instead of clicking “Move,” click on the three-dot “kabob” icon (if you hover over it, a tooltip will tell you it’s the “More” icon) and select “Label as” from the drop-down menu. It’ll show you a list of all your labels, and you can either just scroll down and find the right label, or you can start typing the name of a label and it’ll zip right to it. Click on the label name, if you’re only applying one label, and you’re done.

You won’t need to bother with the kebab menu if you switch to the advanced toolbar. Here’s how to switch:

Then you’ll have a dedicated button to apply a label without moving the thread:

The great thing about labels in Gmail, vs. folders in platforms like Outlook, is that you can apply more than one label to an email thread. That way, it’ll show up in multiple folders. Well, not folders exactly … that’s the confusing thing about labels in Gmail. Yes, they label message threads, but they also act like folders. (Kind of like how light is both a particle and a wave.) When it comes to classifying a thread, you’re applying labels. But labels act like folders when you’re at the main Gmail screen and want to navigate your threads. It’s like your threads can be in two or more folders at once.

Let me give you an example. Several of my friends and family members like beer as much as I do. We send each other Beck’sts, which are beer-themed emails (click here for details). Often one Beck’st begets another, and we have stirring dialogues not just about our beers, but about other topics like being middle-aged, being a parent, etc. (Oddly, a fair bit of my modern correspondence begins with a Beck’st.) Since these threads aren’t just about beer, but also about friends and family, I want to label them accordingly. So I select “Label as” from the drop-down, and check boxes next to all the appropriate labels:

When I’m done, the thread will have all the labels it needs. This means I can hunt for it in my brother B—’s folder, or my friend D—’s folder, etc. If I remember, for example, that D— wrote me about becoming a grandpa, I can search on “grandpa” in his folder whether or not I remember (years from now) that he announced this via a Beck’st.

(Sometimes, you’ll have labeled and archived—i.e., filed—a thread only to receive a new response to it, perhaps from someone on the distro who hadn’t chimed in before. The thread will show up in the Inbox again, at which point you can add the new correspondent’s label to it.)

Remember, you don’t maintain Inbox Zero by taking action on every email right away—you’re just labeling it during triage when this is so easy to do. Triage consists of figuring out whom the email is from, and what it’s about (if you bother to file/label emails by topic). You’re labeling it now, so you never have to revisit it again. Then you can actually get some work done, knowing the most important emails have at least been read and you know what’s waiting for action. Disorganization is distracting!

Again, the pre-labeling is the game-changer … if you try to file emails later, you’ll waste gobs of time re-reading each thread to try to remember what it’s about. Label it the first time you see it, as this will only take seconds. Then, filing later is just a matter of jettisoning it from your inbox.

Flag for follow-up.  If an email will obviously require a reply or some other action, don’t just label it by sender and/or topic—also apply the “_Follow-up” label you created in step #1. Some email is just information, and some needs action. This is the best way to differentiate. Also, by selecting the “_Follow-up” label/folder, you’re basically creating a to-do list of emails requiring action. 

To add to my exhortation to pre-label, the key difference between an email folder (like Outlook uses) and the labels that Gmail uses is that a label doesn’t, by itself, move the email. It just gives it an identity that will persist forever (unless you decide to un-label it). A labeled email is breathtakingly close to being a filed email … all you have to do is get it out of the inbox (by archiving it, or removing the “Inbox” label, which amount to the same thing).

Step #4: Archive messages

Once you’ve read or at least scanned all the emails in your inbox, it’s time to tackle the ones you labeled “_Follow-up.” Since this (probably) won’t be that many threads, you can see them all at once (perhaps by clicking the “_Follow-up” folder, or just eyeballing them in the non-overrun inbox), and decide which are the highest priority. Once they’re dealt with, you can remove the “_Follow-up” label and archive them. If there are emails remaining in your inbox, perhaps a few of them should stay there (to be visible for a while, even if they don’t require action) but others can be archived right away, and all of them eventually. (There’s really no point leaving them in your inbox forever, especially when they’re already labeled.)

There are two ways to archive (i.e., file) email threads: the Archive button, and removing the “Inbox” label. Here’s how you’d archive via the button:

Or, you can click the little “x” on the “Inbox” label; now this message will no longer appear in the inbox.

This second method has the benefit of being applicable across labels. For example, it’s how you’d remove the “_Follow-up” label after action is taken. So when you think your inbox is getting out of hand, you can start at the bottom and work your way up, deciding when it’s time to click the “x” next to the “Inbox” and/or “_Follow-up” labels as appropriate. When you’re done, not only will you be closer to Inbox Zero, but you’ll have made great progress in your filing. If you get behind on that, but realize 20 of your emails are no longer timely, you can just check them all and click Archive. Since they already had labels, they’re now correctly filed, and you didn’t have to reopen them!

A final note on labels: I recommend that, upon sending an email that is not a response (i.e., starting a new thread), you go into your Sent items and slap a label on the message. For example, when I send a Beck’st, I’ll label it, so that even if nobody responds it’ll still show up in my Beck’st folder. And if somebody does respond, his response will already be labeled.

Step #5: Segregate email accounts (optional)

It’s not uncommon to juggle multiple email accounts. Over the past few years, I’ve had my personal email in Outlook; my high school mountain bike coaching emails on a different address, also in Outlook; and my Gmail, which is non-work business email (e.g., LinkedIn stuff). Now I’ve collapsed all three into my Gmail interface, to take advantage of all the features described above.

That said, I still like to have my personal email separate from business, so I created a rule that adds an “Inbox – albertnet account” label on all emails addressed to my personal address, and has these messages skip the main (Gmail) inbox. As with my other inbox, messages are automatically labeled as they come in, and then when I’ve responded (or have decided I don’t need to) I archive them by removing the “Inbox – albertnet account” label.

If your Gmail interface manages multiple addresses, you can set any of your addresses as default, so when you create a message it’ll come from that address, unless you manually change it for that thread. When you reply to a message, it will be sent from whatever account received the email, unless you manually change it for that thread.

Conclusion

I’ll grant you this has been a long, complicated post. It might be pretty daunting to imagine embracing this approach. But to recall last week’s post, an Adobe study of 1,000 white collar Americans found that on average they spent 8.9 hours a day between personal and work email … wouldn’t it be nice to streamline this? Wouldn’t you rather learn one methodology that makes you more efficient, than waste valuable time on into the future on this unavoidable activity? I’m here to tell you that I’m far more efficient and effective since I adopted Inbox Zero … you can be, too.

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Why You Should Embrace Inbox Zero

Introduction

How is your inbox looking right now? Would you say you’re on top of your email? Are you familiar with the term “Inbox Zero”? And why am I asking you all these questions when you have no easy way to answer me? Have I lost it?

Inbox Zero is the rare state of being so on top of your email, there is literally nothing in your inbox. This is more mythic than real—kind of a holy grail. But that’s not even completely accurate, because (as I have learned via some light research) not everybody even thinks it’s even a worthwhile ambition. In this post I will evaluate some of the widely held pros and cons of Inbox Zero, and establish why it is actually an unalloyed good thing. This is Part I of a two-part series. Part II, next week, will give you my step-by-step approach—which really does work—to achieving and maintaining Inbox Zero. This post is about convincing you to do it.

[“Art” above by ImageFX. No rights reserved.]

Before we begin…

Look, I know it’s really annoying that I’m organized and have achieved Inbox Zero and am flossing it here. I will also acknowledge that it’s really unfair how when you shoot spitwads at your screen to spite me, I can’t even see them. You know what else is annoying about me? I always get my taxes done on time (if only in the nick of time); I take great care of my teeth; and, when my wife is out of town and I’m living a streamlined bachelor-style existence, I even achieve Dishwasher Zero and Laundry Zero. Feel free to hate me for all this. If it helps at all, my body has very little core strength. I can barely run at all, and when my kids see me try, they burst out laughing. I’m a notorious cheap bastard. I pee on the rim. In fact I have lots of bad habits and I’m not trying to start a fan club here. My inbox is arguably the only part of my life I have largely under control, so try not to begrudge me it. Okay? Are we good?

Inbox Zero haters

I’m not going to get into a lot of history here, but the term Inbox Zero was coined by a guy named Merlin Mann, who gave a Google Tech Talk describing his methodology in achieving it. (Why wouldn’t you just watch that Tech Talk video instead of reading albertnet? Because it’s too long—you don’t have time. This post will take you five minutes, tops.) Mann himself had been planning a whole book about Inbox Zero, but eventually became disgruntled and halfway disavowed his own belief in the whole concept, or at least his practice of it. His book was eventually abandoned (either by Mann or the reading public, I can’t tell which). This opened the door to naysayers like Mike Sturm who wrote an article in Medium called “Inbox Infinity” with the tagline, “Why I’ve stopped caring about how many emails are in my inbox, and why you should, too.” Sturm maintains that it’s more important to focus on what truly contributes to life goals and well-being, which means taking a balanced approach to email management, blah blah blah.

This is defeatist bullshit. A “balanced approach”? Either you use a methodology or you don’t. It doesn’t work to “balance” your approach across two or more different systems. That’s like a “balanced approach” to birth control where you sometimes use a condom, sometimes practice abstinence, and sometimes pull-&-pray. Look, there is a best approach to your inbox and you should just use it. Sturm tried Inbox Zero, he failed, and so he tried to not just move the goalposts but redefine the entire game. Which he doesn’t get to do. The reality is, email is like a burning bush and we have to beat it back or it will consume us. I suspect you wouldn’t be almost 700 words into this post if you didn’t think there’s some truth to this.

Of course Sturm isn’t the only person who seems completely willing to neglect his or her email. For decades I have been hearing all kinds of people talk about how far behind they are on it; it’s practically a default. “Man, I have 476 unread emails,” a person will say, almost as if bragging. Why do people admit this kind of thing? Am I supposed to be impressed? It’s like somebody saying, “Dude, I literally haven’t had a bowel movement in 12 days.” I don’t want to hear it! You know what else is annoying? When you send an important email to a friend, family member, or work contact and they never see it because they’re so overwhelmed. Maybe you’re a small business owner and you invoice a client and don’t get paid, and then the client is like, “Oh, you emailed me? I didn’t see it! I’m so behind on email!” Look: if you’re a grown-up, that means you pay your bills, you do your taxes, and you keep up with email. I’m not interested in your excuses, particularly the sugar-coated versions of “I am a hopeless correspondent.” If you wouldn’t say to me, “I’ve stopped wiping my ass because I’d rather focus on life goals and well-being,” then don’t tell me you never saw my email.

Often, resistance to Inbox Zero (or passive failure to embrace it) is based on pessimism or resignation. This article in Ladders describes a survey of “1,001 Americans with ‘white-collar’ jobs” which found that 24% believe Inbox Zero is “impossible.” The survey also found that 27% called the effort “borderline OCD.” I find this second category pretty annoying. As with the blanket pejorative term “anal retentive” (a harsh accusation based on the baseless, widely discredited pet theories of a known clown), “borderline OCD” attempts to label perfectly valid behavior as being somehow pathological or at least unseemly. What if there were a psychological term for the polar opposite of OCD? Like, “Passive Lackadaisical Disorder,” or PLD? How come when a person tries to be meticulous, precise, and/or efficient, people cast aspersions, but those who are basically out to lunch get a free pass?

Who strives for Inbox Zero?

Personally, I don’t know of a single other person who achieves, or even tries to achieve, Inbox Zero. This doesn’t mean I’m not surrounded by people who do it and just don’t bother to mention it, of course. Instead of pestering my friends about this (what am I gonna do, blast out a giant group email?), I did some light research, and was surprised by what I found. The Ladders article asserts that 55% of people in their survey claim to have achieved Inbox Zero (which is a little hard to believe considering that 51% of those responding called it either “borderline OCD” or “impossible”). An Adobe study described here, also of 1,000 white collar Americans, found that 55% of Americans at least attempt to achieve Inbox Zero. It also notes that among 18- to 24-year-olds, 68% strive for Inbox Zero. (This flies in the face of a rumor I’ve often heard that younger people have given up on email altogether in favor of social media platforms. This same 18- to 24-year-old cohort leads the nation in checking work email before getting into the office and while on vacation.)

So: if you think Inbox Zero is just for weirdos like me, think again.

The case for Inbox Zero

You know what contributes to goals and well-being? Managing your time, and freeing your brain from the anxiety of a) knowing you’re not on top of things, and b) knowing you’re not doing anything about it. Inbox Zero is about being more effective with email, meaning you’ll possibly read less of it, definitely re-read much less of it, and stop missing important emails because they were buried under all the unimportant ones.

Here’s a sad story. For years I never made any attempt to manage my Gmail inbox, because I hadn’t traditionally used that account for real, person-to-person email. (It was originally connected to my LinkedIn account and that was about it.) I never give out my Gmail address, but Google has its ways of disseminating it (such as through auto-fill with other Gmail users). Surprisingly enough, a reader of this blog, instead of using the “email me here” link that’s at the bottom of every post, got my Gmail address from my Blogger profile and emailed me, at my Gmail address, about one of my posts. The post was a blow-by-blow race report of a Tour de Suisse stage, and included this tidbit:

The emailer was an employee of the aforementioned salad dressing company and here is what he wrote:

Dear Mr. Dana,

My name is Michael A— and I am working for Bruno’s Best. I just saw one of your blogs about the tour de Suisse 2014 in the internet. Nothing against the guys from Gruyère. They produce great cheese, but I am confident that our salad dressing is not that bad as well. J

Just in case you never tried it and will visit Switzerland anytime in the future, you are invited for a dinner at our place. 

Starter : Salad with Bruno’s Salad Dressing
Main Course : Fondue with cheese from Gruyère

How does that sound to you ? J

BEST regards,

Michael A—

I’ve maintained Inbox Zero with my work and personal email for several years, but did not bother doing it with Gmail until a week or so ago, and that’s when I saw the above email, from 2016! It breaks my heart that I missed this email. Not only must I have seemed rude not to reply, but I actually did visit Switzerland (albeit in 2023, though he did say “anytime in the future”) and I could have had a nice meal with this friendly guy! If your inbox is a disaster, how do you know how many important emails like this you may have missed?

I think maintaining Inbox Zero is something everyone should strive for, instead of just putting their head in the sand because it seems so daunting. I think of it like credit card debt: once you fall behind, it can seem hopeless to catch up, so you just resolve not to think about it. Living beyond your means via the convenience of credit might feel like prioritizing what’s important, like family, life goals, well-being, etc., but isn’t throwing money away on interest a pretty big deal? About 47-48% of Americans carry a credit card balance (according to Bankrate and Lending Tree), leading to a net $1.2 trillion in credit card debt ... a curious parallel to the 45% of Americans who don’t worry about their inboxes. The cost of missing emails, forgetting to follow up, and carrying that nagging sense of being behind on work correspondence is of course harder to measure than interest payments … but it’s a cost nonetheless, and not just to the person whose inbox is a mess, but to the people trying to reach him.

But the best reason to adopt Inbox Zero is to make better use of our time, so that we spend less of it doing email. The Adobe study found that those surveyed spend 2.5 hours per day, during the week, on personal email, and 6.4 hours per workday  on business email. Combined, that’s over half our waking hours! Whether that factoid is actually true or not, email is a big part of our lives so it seems absurd not to try to streamline it. And it’s worth noting that the 18- to 24-year-old respondents, who more often strive for Inbox Zero, spend only 5.8 hours per day on work email vs. the overall 6.4. (Wouldn’t you like an extra 36 minutes of your life back each day?)

Over the last several years, since embracing Inbox Zero, I have spent far less time on the following:

• Rereading email
• Searching for an email I know (or perhaps only think) I caught a glimpse of at some point
• Setting aside time, eventually, to file previously read emails, a devastatingly inefficient process because I have to re-familiarize myself with the context of each email
• Doing damage control because I was out of the loop on an important matter I should have kept abreast of

In addition, I have a far easier time prioritizing which emails I should read first, since I’m looking at a handful of them instead of a giant pile.

Tune in next time…

If you already do Inbox Zero but want to see how my method may differ from yours, you are my kind of reader and should definitely check out my next post, “How to Achieve Inbox Zero.” And if you don’t do Inbox Zero today but I’ve piqued your interest, you are also my kind of reader and should definitely check out my next post. And if you feel bored by this entire discussion but have somehow made it to the end of this post, your are also my kind of reader and should definitely check out my next post. And finally, if you are now absolutely certain that you never want to read another word about Inbox Zero ever again, you are still my kind of reader and should click here, and then come back next week anyway.

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XIX

Introduction

This is the nineteenth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I of the series is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume XIV is here, Volume XV is here, Volume XVI is here, Volume XVII is here, and Volume XVIII is here. This post holds the distinction of having the first palindromic volume number since Volume III. (Should you care? No. I don’t even care.) The different volumes have nothing to do with one another, and can be read in order, out of order, in pecking order, in good order, in court order, or in compliance with—or in defiance of—a restraining order.

What are albertnet Bits & Bobs? They’re the little bits of fascinating literary background that my biographer would be thrilled to discover, were I important enough and/or interesting enough to deserve a biography. These tidbits are like what magazines like Us or People Weekly would report on, vis-à-vis celebrities, if these periodicals employed text instead of just photos, and if I were really good looking. Most of these Bits & Bobs are snippets from personal correspondence. Others were written indelibly on my wrist or my psyche with a Sharpie.

The city where I was living at the time of each morsel is provided except where it’s Albany. Pay attention to the dates. Some of these dispatches are hella old. Others are just hecka old.

October 31, 1989 – Santa Barbara

I’ve had a bet with a bunch of guys on the cycling team since last year about the height of Australian cycling superstar Phil Anderson. [For context: this website ranks Phil the 40th best cyclist of all time; it ranks Greg LeMond only 67th.] Someone was trying to say Phil is only like 5’8” or 5’10” or something, which is absurd. I rode with him back to Boulder after the Coors Classic Morgul Bismark stage once, and he seemed a lot taller than that, giving me a great draft (though frankly he was a bit gassy). Anyway, Phil actually lives near here, and he went to a bike gear swap meet this past weekend to sell off some old clothing and such. My pals and I were all there so it was my chance to finally settle the argument. Just between you and me, Phil didn’t really look six feet tall after all. Nevertheless, I casually strolled over to him as though I hadn’t been a major fan for many years (ever since he was the first non-European to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour de France). My friends followed a small distance behind. I guess they were shy.

First, I tried to sell Phil an old Dura-Ace derailleur (just to see the look of pure incredulity on his face, which did not disappoint). Then I told him about the bet and asked him if he was in fact six feet tall. “Aye, I’m six one,” he said, in his cool Australian accent. I turned to J—, my main opponent in the debate, and said, “See! I told you so.” To my astonishment, J— actually tried to argue with Phil about it. That must have taken all the chutzpah he had, since if anything he’s an even bigger fan than I am. How do you simultaneously worship and refute such a vaunted celebrity? Phil told him, “Of course you look taller, mate, look at the thick shoes yer wearing!” J— was pissed (but not as pissed as he’ll eventually be after the tenth or twentieth time I tell this story). The victory could not have been sweeter, not even if Phil had indeed been six feet tall.

November 28, 1989 – Santa Barbara

I have a paper due in my Western History class and decided (based on a suggestion from the T.A.) to explain the Greek philosophy thread in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I’m not that interested in Greek philosophy, or even in history to be honest, but I wanted to read the Zen book anyway. So, I went to the library to get some reference books, and checked out two books on Plato’s Phaedrus character. I have to admit, I was in a rush and didn’t really vet them very thoroughly. So I got home, opened them up, and discovered that one of them is in Greek and another in Latin. Damn it!

March 9, 1996 – San Francisco

I was in my boss’s office when the regional director came in, and he invited us to go out for sushi after work, at a place near the office. (I assume I was invited because I happened to be in the room and it would’ve been rude to exclude me.) I don’t really know from good sushi but it all tasted pretty good. The director wanted to order sea urchin but wasn’t sure he wanted a full order to himself. Oddly, nobody seemed to want to share any with him. I’d never had it but thought well, how bad could it be? So I was like, “Yeah, I love sea urchin, let’s do it!” I mean, I just didn’t want the guy to not get his urchin, since we were all in such a festive and boisterous mood. Well, it turns out urchin is just this big glob of goo, kind of the consistency of a really bad mango, roughly the color of mustard. It was really disgusting—tastes like feet or something—but I had to play along, having pretended to be a fan. Well, I guess my acting was too good because the director was like, “Yeah, this is great, let’s get another round!”

The meal went on for a long time—we just kept ordering and ordering (must’ve cost a ton) and suddenly I realized I’d never called home and let E— know I wouldn’t be home for dinner. So I went to a pay phone and called. She was like, “Where are you, you need to get home! I got the job! We need to celebrate!” (She’d been interviewing for her first job as a full-on journalist.) So I went back out to the group and let them know I had to bail. My boss asked if everything was okay and I gave him the good news. “Wait … so you’re going out to celebrate, as in dinner?!” he asked, incredulous. I was like, “Well, yeah! We’re going to I Fratelli!” (That’s our favorite local Italian place). This didn’t seem like any big deal to me—as you know I’ve been duel-dinnering for many years—but the episode made me kind of a celebrity at work. My boss even clipped a cartoon of some bloated-looking guy fiddling with his belly, which had the caption, “Having forgotten to save room for dessert, Carl switches to his auxiliary stomach.” My boss changed “Carl” to “Dana” and “dessert” to “Italian dinner” and posted it in the break room.

August 4, 1996 – San Francisco

You should be able to find a used modem pretty easily, since the technology is improving all the time. Email doesn’t require a very fast modem, whereas veteran computer users like to download graphics, etc. which does. So, a lot of people have probably upgraded and have perfectly good, albeit slow, modems lying around gathering dust. See if you can find one, because I really think you’d like e-mail. It’s like letter writing but less formal (and of course doesn’t take 2-3 days to deliver).

August 22, 2009

Well, we’re back from London. You probably don’t want to hear about how great it was (and if you do, click here). So I’ll fill you in on what didn’t go so well. On the second night we should have made dinner at the house, for reasons of economy, but were still jet-lagged and didn’t feel like grocery shopping. So instead, we went to this cool pub to get fish-and-chips. We were staying in a very non-touristy area called Ealing (“Queen of the Suburbs,” declared a postcard), and the locals seem to have a distaste for tourists, or small children, or both. I guess we should have been grateful the pub even allowed kids. Well, ours were behaving badly, making too much noise and fighting, and I kept shushing them (amidst the glares of the other patrons), and finally I warned them that if they misbehaved one more time we’d leave and make PBJs at the house. I really hoped they’d take me seriously because I’d just spied Guinness Extra Cold* on draft, which I’d never even heard of and wanted to try, but the kids kept fighting and I had to show them I was serious. So I declared we were leaving. Both kids shrieked in protest, and L— flat-out refused to go. So I picked her up and threw her over my shoulder in the fireman-carry. We marched out of there, the kids literally kicking and screaming. From now on, whenever I need to emphasize that I mean business, I’m going to remind the girls about “the pub incident.”

*Come to think of it, what the Brits call “Guinness Extra Cold” is probably what we Americans would just call “Guinness.” That is, only in the UK do they normally serve beer cool instead of properly cold.

September 15, 2009

I had one of those random showdowns during my bike ride today, the equivalent of a pickup game of basketball with a stranger. I felt decent on the Claremont climb, but not great—I was sick yesterday and E— is sick as a dog (102 fever). So I was pedaling okay, but nothing special. About 2/3 of a mile from the end of my climb, some dude came zipping by me. He was on a really fancy Look, and had pretty good form, and I let him go—at first. But then I noticed that a) he had these deep-section carbon rims, which I’m obviously envious of, and these superlight brakes that Mark has, that don’t work for beans, meaning the guy’s a total weight weenie, and b) he was spinning this really, really high cadence. Like he’s one of these modern angry bikers, the scolds who are telling me I need lower gearing, and he was all “Look at me, I’m spinning, it’s so efficient and won’t hurt my knees!” Needless to say I was insulted. Oh, Mr. Modern, Mr. Latest Cycling Theory, Mr. Fancy-pants Superlight Bike ... well, how would you like a little old-fashioned whup-ass?! He was well ahead at this point, but that just meant I’d have an even bigger head of steam when I came by him.

At least, that’s how I figured it, but he must’ve been peeking back at me because as I approached, he accelerated too. I eventually caught on and latched onto his wheel, and I won’t kid you—I was dying. I decided I’d hang on there for a good while summoning the strength and will to come by him, but then I changed my mind and figured it would be a bigger statement to drop his ass right away and somehow hold him off. The grade got a bit shallower here, which I figured would favor me, being all heavy and angry and all. So I blasted right by him, upshifting several times as I did so to make sure my cadence was nice and low … to make my point. And here’s where I got a sudden inspiration: how better to snub his limp, ineffectual gearing choice than to throw her in the big ring (or the “good ring” as I called it back when I was the founder and president of the UC Santa Barbara Big Ring Club)? 

So throw-her-in-the-big-ring I did, and then had to fricking slay myself to turn it over. Boy, my heart rate really soared here ... during the throw-down it averaged 172 bpm, peaking at 178 (matching my highest for the year). I spanked that over-equipped, pansy-spinning wanker so hard he’s probably out shopping and crying right now. It was glorious. By the time I got to turn off, to go down South Park Drive, he was so far back he probably didn’t even see me turn, which means he probably wondered where I went ... probably figured I reached escape velocity and achieved low earth orbit. Boo-ya, spinnyman!

December 23, 2009

Alas, for some reason the photo attached to your email didn’t come through correctly, it’s just a big blank box. Could you jiggle the little wire and try again?

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume X

Introduction

This is the tenth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, and Volume IX is here. (The different volumes have little or nothing to do with one another.)

As with the last few installments, these are taken from ancient emails, back when I archived them as simple text files in the mistaken belief I’d be able to keep up with the practice. It didn’t last long, but has yielded some fun finds from a bygone era. I wrote all these when I was living in San Francisco, before moving to the burbs and becoming a parent.

December 26, 1994

[Having recently finished a 9-month bike tour] I’m still interviewing for a proper corporate-type job. In the meantime I’ve been working odd shifts at the bike shop in Berkeley, just to feel like I’m not a totally hopeless unemployed person. It’s a pretty ridiculous commute, first biking up and over California Street which has got to be at least a 15% grade, and then all the way under the bay on the Bart, for the typically paltry pay you get at a bike shop. Still, it’s diverting and often fun. For example, on Christmas Eve, a bike builder named Daniel, who has been on suspension without pay until further notice for sloppy work, brought in a 12-pack of Heineken, probably as a brown-nosing move. We threw it in the fridge, and brainstormed ways to get the owner, M—, to let us drink them on the job. M— was in a holiday mood, which was good; earlier, I’d “reminded” him of a policy of always buying lunch for members of the staff who wore staff t-shirts on Christmas Eve, and he went along with it. Well, by mid-afternoon the mad Christmas crowds were getting to me and the boys, and I proposed to M— the idea of discreet alcohol consumption to carry us through. M— said, “What, there’s beers!? Cool, gimme one.” Alas, it appeared we’d have no way to open them, lacking a bottle opener, but I grabbed a Maillard Helicomatic lock-ring tool and it worked great. In fact, it soon dawned on me that one half of the tool does the lock-ring, and the other is in fact nothing else but a bottle opener. You gotta love the French. Well, M— proceeded to walk out on the sales floor, beer in hand, and sell a bike. Needless to say it was a free-for-all after that.

January 1, 1995

I guess I forgot to give you my (kinda) new street address: it’s below. I had some fun moving in here. Our street is fairly flat, but our-cross street, Filbert, is crazy steep. They don’t call our neighborhood Russian Hill for nothing; our hills are as oppressive as Russia herself. Trucks and tour buses are prohibited on Filbert but that didn’t stop me from driving up it in the 14-foot U-Haul I rented. Its diesel engine was taxed to the limit, and I had this breathtaking, terrifying, yet oddly giddy feeling of impending doom. Halfway up—and too late to turn around—my inner ear started giving me (non-verbal) warning messages that the truck was about to pitch over backwards and tumble down the hill, end over end. It was such a fearsome feat that I almost got an erection. I held my breath and reassured myself with the fact that this time, I’d bought the full insurance. Anyhow, I made it over, down the other side on compression (the engine shrieking like it was gonna throw a rod), and then, as a final flourish, proceeded to parallel-park that baby in one of the toughest neighborhoods for parking in the entire city.

March 13, 1995

I am very gratified to get your response. The kind of honesty I indulged in via my letter to you, calling you out as I did, was admittedly dangerous—the recipient of such a letter can either take the painful, self-effacing route (which you did), or delude himself and continue to hide behind the falsity of his social veneer. This latter type, like a blindfolded tyke who has yet to learn object permanence, will assume that because he can’t see the truth, that it can’t see him. Of course such behavior is completely pathological. Right now I’m thinking of J— S—, whose insatiable desire to be cooler than me back in high school took the form of dissing me, like some kind of human sacrifice to the gods of cool. I thought to myself, “J—, can’t you do better than that? It’s not hard to be cooler than me—why don’t you try to be cooler than somebody who actually is cool? Like the Fonz? I mean, seriously … cooler than me? What kind of ambition is that?” I was originally drawn to J— as a friend, back in elementary school, because he was such a bold, unapologetic nerd. Unfortunately, it couldn’t last. Through what he probably thought was a social apotheosis from lowly dork into “happening dude” (his favorite phrase), I witnessed the slow, cancerous death of a personality.

May 2, 1995

Thanks for the warning about the virus! I’ve always wondered whether those anti-virus programs can detect viruses that come over e-mail. Fortunately, almost all my e-mail comes from trusted friends and relatives anyway. I did, however, receive a “junk mail” message at work. I guess business solicitations are frowned upon on the Internet, but on CompuServe [how I get and send e-mail], who knows, maybe anything goes. Anyway, I forwarded your warning message to everybody in my e-mail list (about 20 people).

So, yeah, e-mail sure is cool. It’s been wonderful to be able to write my brother Geoff without waiting for the normal three weeks or so it takes the postal service to carry physical mail to the Netherlands. Maybe I’ll get a sound card for my PC and record my actual voice, and send the recording as a binary file; Geoff could hear a reasonable computer facsimile of my voice on the other end! Of course that would be more of a parlor trick than anything useful. You know, the strangest thing about e-mail is that my dad, who by all means ought to be a master of this technology, has not actually joined up. And yet he has the computer, and the mind, for it. Bizarre.

August 6, 1995

You know what? Every time I make my Mexican rice, I think of the time I made it at your place in NYC, and scorched it. The horror! I am certain that you threw away the leftover rice, because it was, well, inedible. I only hope you didn’t have to throw away the pot since I’d blackened it so badly. I keep thinking about what a disaster that was. I say all this to my shame. I guess what I’m saying is, you should really come out to San Francisco so that I can try again with the rice, and show you that it really is good when the right ingredients and familiar kitchen equipment are on hand. I could send you back with a new pot, even. So if you get the chance, please come. Until then, I suppose you can just curse my name.

October 24, 1995

Using the formula f=mgh, and my stopwatch and altimeter data, I have calculated my power output for the climbs I biked up today: over a period of 16:30, I averaged 0.37 horsepower. But what does that mean? Does it mean I have a third of the strength of a horse? Well, not really; I don’t think horsepower applies to horses in the real world. But we do use horsepower to describe certain things. For example, my output was .0037 times the horsepower of a 1985 Volkswagen Jetta, I happen to know. And it would be more than enough to power a Hoover Mighty Might vacuum cleaner. If that’s not interesting to you, consider that 0.37 horsepower translates into 272 watts. That tells us my output is enough to power one of our chandeliers and a desk lamp.

November 1, 1995

Why yes, I’ve been to House of Nanking many times, and thanks for asking. I guess I can’t really recall what my favorite dishes are there, as I try to mix it up each time. Until recently, my strategy was to spend my time in line asking everybody else what they usually get. But the last time, I was in the mood for chow fun and asked the waiter, who is also the owner, if they had it. (In my experience, you can ask for just about anything, including chili mac, at a Chinese restaurant and they’ll have it, even if it’s not on the menu. Not that I have ever actually asked for chili mac. I’m just sayin’.) Well, the owner looked at me as if I were some kind of uncultured rube (which I may well be). “No, chow fun is white-man food!” he laughed. “This your first time here?” I said, “Uh … no.” He nodded and said, “I’ll set you up.” What then transpired you can well imagine, as you described your own Nanking dining experience so well in your last epistle … I need say nothing more. I love that place. It’s always worth the wait. I like the strange vegetables that they use—yams, for example. Totally unique (plus I normally hate yams). As far as the place being greasy, sure, it’s greasy, as Chinese food tends to be, but compared to most places, it goes down (and stays down) pretty darn well. Man. Now I can’t get that place off my mind.

August 27, 1996

How cool, I just figured out how to hook the CD-ROM in my computer into my boom box. It works great—so it looks like I bought computer speakers for nothing. Oh well. Now I can play CDs, which I never could before. Only problem is, I only own two CDs and they were both freebies that E— got from her work. I guess I could check out CDs from the library and tape them. Or of course I could do like everyone else and just go to the record store and buy music, but E— and I are trying to save up for a house one day, which is no easy feat in this area. We looked at a 2-bedroom condo a few doors down and it’s $250,000! There are 1-bedroom condos on top of Russian Hill for $1 million … as if! Sausalito is probably only slightly cheaper than San Francisco, and we’d have to pay $3 a day to commute in over the Golden Gate Bridge (not to mention fighting the traffic … no thanks). So we have to be pretty frugal while we figure out where, one day, we might be able to afford a place.

December 2, 1996

Just had the stomach flu. As if in some awful parody of the three-squares-a-day rule, I deposited my Thanksgiving dinner, in three installments, into the toilet (out the front end). Damn!

December 23, 1996

In reply to your question:

>>You’re set in Internet EtheReal Estate, hottest property going 
>>(the new frontier). But still one question: where do you put 
>>the relatives when they come to visit?

Well, it’s really pretty BASIC. First, I should say that my family members aren’t exactly queuing up to visit me. But when one or two of these characters feels the need to offload, I’m happy to let them nest in any free partition in my home. I help download their luggage (we have a little cache to store any valuables they might have). If they stay the night, I have a strange kind of cot I fashioned out of a kind of braided fiber (a web, you might say) that I’ve stretched over a mainframe. I have a nice spreadsheet for the cot, and some other soft wares, to make guests as comfortable as possible. Usually I keep the bedding compressed, but sometimes I set it up just for CIX and floppy down on it myself.

I’d really like to keep my domain open, but I normally limit it to friends and family. I mean, entertaining is a real effort for me—I guess I’m just not a natural-born server. Multi-tasking is hard for me so I just can’t monitor everyone all the time. I struggle to be a good host sometimes, and some guests I don’t like the slightest bit. Most are basically OK, but many just don’t observe the proper protocol. I can handle it if they’re not PC, but I won’t tolerate bad language. In fact, the next time I get a cursor, he’d better be ready to run, because I swear I’ll boot him!

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume VIII

Introduction

This is the eighth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, and Volume VII is here. (The different volumes have nothing to do with one another.)

As with the last installment, these are taken from emails, back when I archived them as simple text files so that one day, when I was a celebrity blogger, I could mine them for tasty nuggets that would thrill my readers without requiring me to write anything new. How prescient, since the Internet was just getting started and blogs were not yet a thing…

March 14, 1995

The [HP] Vectra [computer] is still down at work. I found the setup disks and ran setup to check the CMOS settings. They were all okay; I don’t know what the problem is. I called tech support and when they heard what year the computer was, they said, “Oh, you’ll have to get in touch with our HP Classics department. The only problem is, the old geezers we’ve got down there can’t always hear the phone ringing.” Actually, I made that last part up. But there really is an HP Classics department, and they really don’t answer their phone.

May 10, 1995

I was in the company president’s office the other day having a big important one-on-one meeting, and the phone rang. The big boss got embroiled in a conversation, and you know, I’ve always really hated that. Am I just supposed to sit there in his office, contentedly watching him as he talks and as he twirls his hair around his finger in little curlicues that eventually match the phone cord, which is all twisted from his endless pacing? No way could I do that. But could I just leave? No—any motion towards the door and the boss is frantically gesturing for me to stay. What do I do? So I idly picked up three company-logo-embossed golf balls off of his desk and began juggling. And, sure enough, I dropped one, and it began rolling across the floor, and just when I was on my hands and knees retrieving it (in my $500 suit, of course) the boss got off the phone. I casually put the golf balls back on his desk and we continued our conversation. He didn’t seem fazed, so I guess he’s used to my behavior—and that can’t be a good sign. Will I ever grow up? It reminds me of how you got in trouble for your rubber-band fights at your first job out of college. You’ve really been an inspiration to me, you know.

January 6, 1996

I got a voicemail from my old boss, from [the job I’d quit about a month before]. He said the Vectra, which is the shared hallway computer, had crashed, and he had no idea what to do. They’re in a panic because it’s the only computer with CompuServe access. I had to laugh. I’d been warning people for months that the computer was showing signs of a bad CMOS battery and that its days were numbered. I even put a sign on it saying “Don’t turn me off or I’ll die.” Well, they should have listened. Asking for help now is like saying, “Well, the house burned to the ground. The fire department just finishing hosing things down. Did you say something a while back about smoke detectors?”

January 28, 1996

[To my brother Geoff] … I’ve been thinking lately about our Murray Street Station [San Luis Obispo] days. I still have that original microwave oven, and even one of those big plastic lidded pitchers we used to keep the refried beans in. Remember that awful Thanksgiving dinner at Sizzler? Man, those were the days. Remember all the Canadian-bacon-and-pineapple pizzas K— [the bike shop owner] used to buy us? And how great it was to get free pizza, but how sick we were of that variety? Like, it would be petty and annoying to complain, and yet we’d like pepperoni and mushroom so much better? I actually oddly miss those factory days, too. Sure, the work wasn’t so fun but I became fond of our routine, like how we’d stop at that grocery store (what was it called? Willie Bros, yeah, that’s it) and get Snickers bars to console ourselves because of the brutal cold wind facing us all the way home, every night? And how we used to rent videos at that one place 24/7 because the clerk was so fly? And the Lady Lee Deluxe Chocolate Fudge Brownie Supreme ice cream we’d split, just sawing the half-gallon carton down the middle? And all that cake? And our pushup and sit-up regimen, that made you so buff but never did anything for me? Man, I kinda miss those days.

February 9, 1996

Please retransmit your last email, with the attached article, in some other form than MIME (whatever that is), if possible. Or maybe you could use OCR to convert the article to plain ASCII text? Hmmm . . . I’m not sure Apple computers do ASCII. Or, you could fax the article to my computer, except I have no idea how to set it up to receive faxes, nor do I want to leave it turned on all the time. Then there’s the problem of screwing something up so that the fax answers the regular phone and deafens the hapless caller with its shrieking session-handshake protocol. (My modem came with voice-mail software, too, but I don’t think I want to mess with that, either.) Basically, I’ve got more computing power than a third world country, and no desire to use most of it.

April 24, 1996

We were in L.A. last weekend for a book festival, and Ray Bradbury and Geoffrey Wolff were both speaking. The lines for both were quite long and we worried we wouldn’t get in to either one. Wolff’s seminar, called “Memoirs,” seemed like the slightly less popular one and I thought I might have a better chance of getting into that, but it would mean giving up my spot in the Bradbury line. When I complained about my dilemma, one of the other people waiting in the line said, “Yeah, that’s a tough decision: you’ve gotta choose between the past and the future!”

I was doing my Marin Headlands loop today and I caught up to a pretty fit looking mountain biker. I passed him, and he immediately passed me back, and started hammering. I sat, bored, on his wheel for a while (it was pretty steep so I wasn’t getting too much benefit from drafting) and eventually I decided he was going too slow, and I passed him again. Well, this incited him further, and he took the lead again and started really jamming. Well, woe be to me, he simply rode me off his wheel. On a damn mountain bike! Knobby tires and everything! Man, that was humbling. I just couldn’t keep up. He took some time out of me, too, and finished the climb well ahead. Well, I was encumbered further by a couple of cars on the descent that followed, but on the next climb I blew by him. I was going so hard he couldn’t even get my wheel. I continued to hammer and basically never saw him again. I know they say he who laughs last laughs best, but still . . . he who is laughed at is still laughed at. Man.

June 18, 1996

With regard to your inquiry about bike frame geometry, I doubt there’s anything shallow about your Guerciotti’s head tube angle. My Guerciotti is the same model and only like a year older, and its head angle is like 74 degrees! Yours might be a bit more shallow than mine because it’s a smaller frame, and because you have a smaller penis than I do, but still, I’d expect it to be at least 73 degrees. In any case, this should have almost nothing to do with the way the bike climbs. What do you mean, the front wheel is “slow to move”? As far as I know, the only motion you want is for it to roll. And if it’s rolling too slowly, I would think that’s a fitness problem on your part. (The only other time I’ve heard somebody complain of something like this was when I sold my wife’s would-be-ex-stepmother-in-law a Bianchi and she said it handled “like a cow” when she got out of the saddle. We isolated the problem: low pressure in the front tire.) Anyhow, my Team Miyatas, all three of them, had shallow (73 degree) head angles and they seemed to climb just fine. Actually, they climbed like shit because they were heavy, but I had no problem per se with getting the front wheel to rotate.

June 30, 1996

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
ALBERT ON NATIONAL TELEVISION

HERTOGENBOSCH, THE NETHERLANDS: American television audiences received a long-overdue treat today: Geoff Albert, one of the finest looking young individuals the free world has ever produced, graced the airwaves with several seconds of his normally elusive presence.

The footage occurred during routine coverage of the Tour de France bicycle race on ESPN, an American sports network. No sooner had Stage One coverage of the race begun than the camera panned over Albert—not just his face, but his entire body as well. The camera, held by a motorcycle-mounted cameraman, was giving a racer’s-eye view of the course, and thousands of screaming, hand-waving fans struggled to get into the picture. However, when the motorcycle approached Albert, it found him strangely aloof from the rest of the crowd—somehow closer to the road, and totally unobstructed. In the nonchalant style of someone accustomed to the spotlight, Albert made no move to draw the cameraman’s attention. He simply stood there, hands thrust in his back pockets, Pentax camera hanging around his neck … the very image of nonchalance. As the motorcycle passed him, his eyes tracked the camera. As an estimated 1 billion people watch Tour de France coverage worldwide, and the footage is the same across TV networks, so it is expected that millions of female viewers were instantly, and irrevocably, smitten. Also likely is that many millions of men grumbled enviously. One thing is certain: for those fleeting moments, nobody was thinking about the bicycle race.

Why Albert was so calm and unimpressed by his moment of glory is simple to understand: he is no stranger to celebrity, and would consider this episode more of a gift to viewers than to himself. Less easy to understand is why Albert commanded such a large spectating area in the otherwise totally packed sidelines. His twin brother Bryan, an expert on such matters, speculates that “Geoff probably forgot to wear his deodorant today.” Such an oversight is not hard to imagine; after all, both of the Albert twins have earned quite a reputation over the years for their casual approach to hygiene.

Network spokesmen predict that those precious few moments of footage will boost ESPN’s ratings and help secure many more years of cycling coverage on the network. Meanwhile, journalists everywhere are speculating that this year’s coverage is well on the way to winning numerous awards for its shrewd camera work.

Albert was unavailable for comment. And, with the Tour moving to Belgium tomorrow, it is unlikely that viewers will be given an encore. With three more weeks of racing ahead, it’s entirely possible that the racers, not this sole spectator, will begin to command the attention of sports aficionados. But for today, Geoff’s televised moment is the hottest news in cycling.

August 24, 1996

Wow, I just figured out how to hook the CD-ROM in my computer into my normal stereo. It works great—so it looks like I bought those new computer speakers for nothing. Oh well. Now I can play CDs, which I never could before. Only problem is, I only own two CDs and they were both freebies E— got from her work. I guess I can check out CDs from the library and tape them. (Of course I could buy some, but E— and I are trying to save up for a house, which is no easy thing to buy around here.)

December 17, 1996

At our company holiday party we had a “white elephant” gift exchange whereby you wrap up something that you don’t want, that somebody gave you as a gift, or that you can’t believe you ever bought, and you bring it in and put it on a table. Then everybody draws a number and the person with #1 chooses first. Now, #2 gets to either choose a gift or take #1’s gift instead (meaning that #1 gets to choose again). I brought this large cheese holder, ceramic, that’s basically a plate with a 4-inch tall cylindrical cover that goes over it, so you can store cheese at room temperature. It said “CHEESE” on it. E—’s mom gave it to us and E— never did like it. The person who got it, our receptionist, was totally stoked, I could tell. (She said later she was in total suspense the whole evening, hoping that nobody would take it away from her.) I stole our other receptionist’s Martinelli’s sparkling cider. The look on her face was one of absolute shock and unbridled grief. She was devastated. (It was one of the first gift takeovers of the day.) I felt so bad, I decided I’d offer to trade her later. She ended up with a pair of Christmas mugs, one shaped like a reindeer head and the other like a Frosty the Snowman head. They were just too hideous and she looked crestfallen all over again. I told her, “Look, I’m not willing to trade gifts, but I would like to just give you my Martinelli’s. The look on your face ... it was like I ran over your dog.” She insisted that I keep the cider; then, minutes later, the director of the entire western region (who got a Mag-lite, the lucky guy) reappeared after a brief absence: he’d gone out and bought the receptionist a replacement bottle of cider. Disaster narrowly averted. I hope my hostile takeover wasn’t career-limiting.

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