OS X

A few months ago I got another call from a friend, giddy as a schoolgirl, telling me they got a Mac.  I’m not sure what it is about these machines:  It’s not like switching from Honda to Volkswagen.  People who get their first Mac act like their life just changed: their first baby may have just been born but they’re asking me what to do to their Mac.  They’re teenagers again, who just bought their first car.  Freaks. (Or was I the same way back in the last ice age when I got my first mac?) No matter.  This is not a social studies course.  I get questions about “what to do first” on a new Mac, so I’ll address them here.

But first a correction.  People seem to “switch” to mac these days.  I’m personally not keen on that word choice.  ”Switch” implies a fairly dramatic (if not major) change.  You switch a light off or on going from darkness to light or vice versa, for example.  I’m guessing the Apple marketing geniuses love this idea that you’re putting something behind you, switching

 to something new and exciting.  But I think it’s more of a shift. Like shifting from 2nd to 3rd: you’re still driving the same car on the same road, but you’re moving better now.  Apple goes to lengths to remind us that we can now run Windows on a Mac, so even when you’re switching, you don’t have to, really.  Parenthetically, I know only few people who run Windows on their Mac, and they have specific requirements such as server software that require Internet Explorer.  Even Windows devotees will tell you not to run IE but I’ll again leave this philosophical tangent for a later time, like after a few martinis at Old Ebbitt.

One last thing by way of introduction: this is not purely an entry-level “top ten” list on how to use the Mac.  There are plenty of these.  I’m assuming most of you have some, even minimal familiarity with OS X by now, have installed the software updates (your Mac will have told you to anyway), and are able to use Safari to get to this article.  If you don’t, follow along anyway…but if you are not yet comfortable with a one-button mouse, I suggest browsing Apples Mac 101.   

Now on to step 2.

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I came upon this article in the New York Times when doing research for a blog post.   I figured, what better way to introduce a new “productivity” category?  These are some astonishing figures:

the cost of unnecessary interruptions is $650 billion per year

This is mostly mundane matters, in large part dealing with email, IM, SMS, etc.  The majority of the cost is in the time it takes to get back to work

28% of a workday is spent in interruptions

For those familiar with Stephen Covey’s quadrant, this is in the “Not Important, Not Urgent” category.  Another 20% is spent in meetings (though whether these are important or ugent is not addressed), and part of 25% is spent writing “productive” emails.  This is almost 3 hours in a 10 hour workday.
On the email side, new terms are hitting the street such as “email apnea” (the condition of holding your breath when you realize you have 300 new emails), and “email bankruptcy” (where you have so many emails you have to delete your inbox and try again.)   Gmail recently added a “take a break” feature in Gmail, which locks you out of your mail for 15 minutes.

In light of this, I’ve decided to add a few more things to my list of email productivity.

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