And here are the results from the last poll.

Postings and responses were mixed.  I could talk for a while and analyze whether or not it is possible to be productive when there are 2,000 e-mails in your In Box, but I’ll let your own conscience ring in on that one as you are asking yourself if your current system is working.  Instead, I’ll share a bit about what I did and how I’m hoping to reclaim my productivity.

This quest for In Box Zero was inspired by a few frustrating e-mail searches during situations where I needed to be able to quickly locate an email.  As I was frustrated by the huge numbers of messages that kept coming up no matter how specific I thought my searches were, I realized something big.

My e-mails are important, but not that important.

I owe it to myself to manage my own life intentionally and with the same care that I coach my own students and staff to do for each other. I am really starting to tire of all of the student affairs culture that asks us to wear our stress as a “badge of honor” as we tell anyone who will listen how busy we are.  This has to stop, especially if we are going to accomplish the respect we are looking for.  We need to show our campus leadership and ourselves that we have our *stuff* together.

Getting to the point of In Box Zero took about two days of moderate focus (I will confess!! It was fun – a nerdy “spring cleaning” of sorts).  Here were some important parts of my attempt:

• Email folders are my new best friend.  If you think of a paper-driven system, my former In Box was akin to a pile of papers with the one that just came in on the top.  They are now filed in a system that makes sense, kind of like file folders, so if I need to quickly review emails all relating to the same event or issue they are still there.
• Un-subscribing like it’s my job. In campus activities we get a lot of email from artists, agents, vendors, etc.  In many cases, these subscriptions are not ones that I asked for but are ones that come with membership in associations.  My past approach was just deleting, but now I’m also making an effort to unsubscribe to those I will never need.
• Ruthless deleting. For every message, I thought hard about “what are the chances I will need this info again?” and “can I get this information somewhere else if I needed it again?”

I got to In Box Zero in time for this past Thursday’s #sachat, as promised.  The main question is, can this last?  From here out, I’m hoping to change some things about the way I work to take more control over my management of information.  Based on the Tuesday Tally results, I think at least a few of you might be interested in joining me on this quest!

• In Box Zero is the goal each week.  I don’t think I can manage it each day, but I think by the end of the week each week I can do this.
• No more using email as a To Do List. This was sage advice I received  (from the wise @reyjunco) and I will most definitely oblige.  Most of the reasons why I was keeping so many emails was “as a reminder” that I had to do something.  I was also keeping a To Do List that usually included all of the email items, but not always remembering them. From here on, I’m deleting or filing those messages after I enter the task on my list.  Now, my e-mail is in better control and my To Do list is now more of an accurate picture of what is on my plate.
• When In Box Zero is accomplished, close the e-mail. Again, sage advice from Reynol Junco (@reyjunco…follow him!).  With e-mail being empty, the accumulation of a few messages isn’t a big deal anymore.  The peace of mind of not worrying about every little message coming in for a few hours is quite nice.
• Set up some rules. For the e-mail subscriptions that I kept, I set up auto rules for the ones that I wanted to read when I have time. This way, the messages are out of my day-to-day message flow and I can review them when I get time.
• Manage the blog reading. Before I really figured out the world of the blog, I was subscribed to some blogs via email/RSS.  I finally caught up to the rest of the world and started using Google Reader in the way it is supposed to be used.  My newsflash: Collect all of these great messages in one place…and that place is NOT in my email!  This way, I can use Google Reader when I have the time to read the blog posts.

The feeling of getting the e-mail world under control is this ENFJ’s “natural high.”  This is a great feeling and I really believe I can approach the work week with a bit more sanity.  I have this community to thank for some motivation.

For more on In Box Zero, Merlin Mann is the guru you want to read more about.  Check out his 43folders.com site. More About In Box Zero

So, are you willing to give this a try, or are you sticking with the “I’m Too Busy” explanation?  If you can’t work on this, what are your struggles with managing your e-mail and getting control over your work?

In case you missed it, below is a quick recap. If you haven’t yet participated in an #sachat, learn more here.

Full Transcripts
DAYTIME:
View as webpage
Download as PDF

EVENING:
View as webpage
Download as PDF

Today’s Top Contributors

@JGinese23
@jmayojr
@edcabellon
@Geralyn5
@The_SA_Blog
@cindykane
@reyjunco
@debrasanborn
@AndreaHart
@bryan_koval

Here’s to another successful set of #sachats!  What are some other topics you would like to see us cover?  Please let us know your ideas and feedback to keep #sachat growing strong.

Until we next week, (if you haven’t already done so) please make sure to join our growing Facebook Page, currently over 2,600 and adding new #studentaffairs friends every day!  Thanks for your continued support!

And here are the results from the last poll.

In case you missed it, below is a quick recap. If you haven’t yet participated in an #sachat, learn more here.

Full Transcripts
DAYTIME:
View as webpage
Download as PDF

EVENING:
View as webpage
Download as PDF

Today’s Top Contributors

@JGinese23
@reyjunco
@The_SA_Blog
@edcabellon
@cindykane
@m1hamilton
@thestacyface
@pereirap80
@princeje

Here’s to another successful set of #sachats!  What are some other topics you would like to see us cover?  Please let us know your ideas and feedback to keep #sachat growing strong.

Until we next week, (if you haven’t already done so) please make sure to join our growing Facebook Page, currently over 2,600 and adding new #studentaffairs friends every day!  Thanks for your continued support!

First, this discussion about developing “street cred” if you will for student affairs is essentially asking how you get administration (a nameless faceless entity, i suppose) to understand what we do. The inherent assumption is that they don’t understand or that they do understand but they don’t think it’s valuable. If we were going to stereotype the view of student affairs both within and without of student affairs, I believe that stereo type would be that we’re “in loco parentis” style baby sitters, we create play time for our kids, and we hold their hands and try to protect them from the big bad faculty. As with most assumptions, this is unfair. Some of the big bad faculty are ALWAYS looking out for students, and some within student affairs favor the approach of throwing students to the wolves over a touchie-feelie approach.

Personally, I find this argument about “admin doesn’t understand what we do” a little tired. If they don’t understand what they do, they’re no different from most people at high levels within organizations. They understand in theory what we do, but they don’t know in detail (isn’t this what that new TV show is about?). Here’s a realization that I think we all need: THEY DON’T NEED TO KNOW WHAT WE DO IN DETAIL. It’s not their job to know the details of our job, it’s our job to know the details of their job. I’m almost certain that most of us have only a basic idea of what our chancellors and VPs do on a daily basis even though we might like to think otherwise. To think that it’s their responsibility to understand every intimate detail of every job on campus is childish.

Second, without fail, the first answer to “how to gain respect” is assessment. Don’t think I’m about to slam assessment; I love assessment, and frankly I don’t think we assess enough. During my internship in grad school in student affairs assessment, the assessment reports that I looked at were PATHETIC and an absurd joke. Most departments in student affairs don’t take this seriously and most of these reports barely get looked at because they don’t actually assess anything that carries weight at a cabinet meeting. VPs might like reading anecdotes, but it’s hard to imagine a meeting at the VP level where an anecdote about how a students heart was touched is read; it’s not that they don’t care, it’s just that they have bigger things to handle. Another problem with assessment – as an old quote says “there are lies, damned lies and statistics”, sharing a bunch of stats does nothing because it’s so easily manipulated.

Third, I think student affairs speaks a different language than the rest of the campus. One of the main critiques you hear of faculty on research campuses is that they don’t have time for students because they’re doing research. However, I would frame it a different way – they’re doing research because that’s a huge part of their job – big difference. When we’re talking about “i had 15 students come to my workshop on getting along with my roommate” and they’re talking about 9 journal articles they got published, we’re really talking on two different planes.

So, what’s my point?

I think I’m essentially arguing for the progression of student affairs as a profession. We’re not that old, not nearly as old as the faculty profession and I think the discussion of “how to gain respect” evolves out of a desire to take our profession from something we can be proud of on the campus, not just in our staff meetings or in our student affairs christmas socials where we’re making christmas bags for our students with glue, yarn and glitter.

I have a couple suggestions, but I don’t think this is a comprehensive list.

1. what does the faculty use to establish their value to a campus?  I argued on Twitter that faculty establish value by publishing, bringing in students (recruiting), research grants and revenue from research.  If I were to summarize these thematically, I would call it “money and prestige”.  My question is how can student affairs bring money and prestige to the campus through our work.  I think the answer will be different for each office so I’ll not make more specific suggestions.
2. If we’re going to do assessment, it needs to connect directly with the mission of our office AND our division and meet scientific research standards.  Most of our assessment is a joke because we don’t know how to be research scientists.  Clearly this is time consuming, but if the profession is going to progress I think this is an area we clearly don’t bring our A game currently.  Do it right, connect with the standards of real research scientists or don’t do it.

Running that search everyday can get a little time consuming, and if your institution gets a lot of press you’ll see a lot of tweets from non-students.  I’ve solved that problem by importing the RSS feed for each twitter search I monitor into my Google Reader account.  This has made everything so much easier!  Not only can I mark tweets as read, I can search the tweets for key words such as “apply,” “accepted” or “housing.”

Using Google Reader allows me to monitor more searches than I normally would, so I can search twitter for the words students use to refer to our services.  This means searching for “dorm” even though we consider that a dirty word (we’re residence halls!), searching for each of our buildings, the name of our institution, etc.  I’ve even started a search for “campus” with geographic limitations to see what comes up.

Do you have unique strategies for managing your department’s twitter activities?

We’re excited to open the digital doors for our upcoming webinar on Leveraging Social Media for Increased Student Engagement. This webinar is an updated version of our last webinar in December on the same topic. The biggest update is the inclusion of a student panel to talk about how they want you to engage them online.

100% of the webinar proceeds go to the Student Blogging Scholarship.

We limit “seating” to allow everyone to engage in the Q&A, so check below for details and to reserve your spot.

Title: Leveraging Social Media for Student Engagement
Date: Wednesday, Mar 3rd 2010
Time: 3-4:15pm EST
RSVP: http://webinar03-03-10.eventbrite.com/

**Sign up before Saturday, Feb 27th and save 25% with code: Early-25 (works for both the webinar ticket and audio/slides)

And here are the results from the last poll.