Every day has a three hour window of Jake-time for @endmyopia.
Some days its a bit more, others a bit less. I keep track of it, make sure it averages out to about three hours.
The three hour rule helps to solve time sucking problems, instead of just accepting to have to work longer. Things like e-mail volume spam issues are solved by having an admin, and not doing case specific support (anymore) outside the forum. But I do love to get your e-mails! I always wonder about your experience, without e-mail it’d be pretty weird to write these daily blog posts.
Check out the various sort of things you’d get to experience if you were getting my e-mails every day.
Ready?
Thumbs-Up & Question
First, there’s the “thumbs up, oh and btw question” e-mail. Lots of these.
Completely loving the pretty consistent, polite starting out with “hey, love your stuff, here are my improvements”, before the question. This trick makes me much more likely to answer in some detail, and surprisingly many e-mails are formatted like this. Kudos!
And then there is my other favorite kind of e-mail, the feel-good e-mail.
The Feel-Good E-Mail
You’re doing great, you’re making progress, you love the site, and if I’m really lucky, you even find something good to say about the videos (I’m super, super self conscious about the video bit).
I could read a hundred of these every day!
The Jake Under-Delivers E-Mail
But it’s not all sunshine and unicorn rainbows, on most days. Here is the kind of e-mail that I dread a bit, and occupies a lot of my thinking time:
The problem with this kind of e-mail, is that it’s well written, concise, obviously somebody intelligent took the time to express their disappointment. So Regan here is obviously literate, and just got nothing out of what I put together.
For every one person who says this, there must be hundreds more who feel the same way, but just don’t bother to write.
How do I improve here? This is why I put huge debits into the three hour limit to do things like yesterday’s exercise. Buy and learn about Adobe Illustrator, figure out how the infographic style thing works, attempt to make simplified, visually appealing, … stuff. Because there is a giant pile of improvement suggestions always pending, and when I’m frustrated about under delivering, I try new ways to make things better.
Video exists for the same reason. Even though most times I make a new thing, I think I’m just making things worse (really, my face in shaky cam selfie park videos .. yikes).
Whatever. Next!
Gives Me The Eye Exercises
There’s this kind of interesting e-mail. Definitely frequent, and I might get a little not-politically-correct here in a moment. First, look-see:
Are these people trolling?
The grammar and spelling tends to vary here, and for the non-PC part, whenever I see the Ratheesh type names, I wince and brace for the troll-esque question. I’m not trying to stereotype here, but when you’ve made it through thousands and thousands of e-mails over months and months, at some point it’s hard to ignore some symptoms.
I’ll continue to be pleasant and agreeable in the face of eye exercise questions. I suggested Ratheesh Google “Bates method”, for answers.
Groovy Progress
But not really a big deal. These aren’t excessively frequent. What is frequent, is really actually just great e-mails. See Patrick:
Love these!
For every one Ratheesh, and every you-suck-Jake e-mail, there are a dozen that are awesome. Love the details. It’s a brief moment of stepping into your world, read about your experiences, and feeling like all those hours of writing this crazy blog is indeed worth it. You guys, who send these e-mails, is why there is the daily blog.
If it wasn’t for the Patricks and Laceys and Argyronetas, I’d be holed up with just the students in BackTo20/20. That bunch, 100% certainty that every message is absolutely worth the time spent, they make me feel like we’re making a fair trade (hey, I’m not that much of a communist, to be valuing all of my time at zero dollars).
But then I get the e-mails from kids who don’t have money to spend, or guys in countries where salaries are small, or single moms with three kids, or dudes who save up their money to keep traveling the world. I’m totally communist enough to support all of that, and I’ll gladly give up some free time to make sure they too get good stuff (that forum though, and structured sessions, you’re soo missing out …). ;)
You guys are awesome.
Cheers!
-Jake
