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How to handle over 100 mails a day

The days when you get over 100 mails you need more than 2 hands to reply. I have many email accounts (official and personal) and till some time back I had problems in handling all at the same time. I hated outlook for the complexity it offered me (I am using three computers, one desktop and one Laptop in office, one desktop at home). Configuring outlook every time and exporting the mails was a messy stuff. Moreover I had saved some documents inside mail accounts which was needed during meetings where I was not carrying the laptop. I liked the way Gmail handled my accounts and the simplicity it offered me. I could upload my files and access it easily. I liked its search too. Google made my life even easier with Gmail multiple account handler.

Over 100 emails a day

Even with these features I was finding it difficult to answer all the emails. I tried arranging it with various labels but it did not work for me. At the end of the day checking all folders (labels) was again complex. Sometimes I forgot to answer some important emails because of the overloaded inbox or multiple folder arrangements. The unread mails had higher chances of getting an answer, I used to forget about the read ones.

to reply label

Now I have started using one label (to-reply). If I get an official mail on Sunday eve, instead of adding a task for it I will label it with “to-reply” and forget it for Monday, similarly a personal mail will be labeled “to-reply” during office hours. This allows me to reply at my ease without forgetting the important emails. Now

  1. I handle all my mails using one master account.
  2. I read all mails whenever I want to read and reply with ease.

Other useful resources on mail management

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B-School Tag Game/ Blog Tree (Level 0)

Welcome to the B-School Tag Game/ B-School Blog Tree. The complete details are available at http://inferno.aimk.org/bschool-blogtree.html. Let me start the game. It is going to be very nostalgic and fun. I have so much to write, let me start with the first point.

5 things I miss about college

  1. The sleep (both in classroom and in hostel room).
  2. Burning roomy’s undies to kill ants.
  3. The clean, tidy hostel rooms (ha ha ask my roomies). We had all our chairs full of clothes, everything so professionally unorganized.
  4. GP ke parathe, we use to have it at 3 am or 5 am in the morning, breaking the fast before going for sleep.
  5. The Batch, friends and all people. I really really miss the group.

Five things that I do not miss (optional)

  1. The mess food.
  2. The frog music (during the monsoon season).
  3. Surprise exams by Prof Arnab Laha.
  4. Rammstein and the desi 70s music.
  5. Warden Maam’s message.

5 favorite Professors

  1. Arnab Laha (Statistics, data compression, data encryption and digital signal processing).
  2. Debashis Jana – ( OOPs through C++ , Artificial Intelligence) – He is an amazing prolog programmer.
  3. Probal Sengupta – I did my summer project under him (and Mr Annirudha Dasgupta) in alumnus.
  4. Pinaki Mitra (Crytography & Data Security)
  5. AK Halder (Marketing – He motivated me to learn marketing, now with globsyn).

Passing the ball to

  1. Rajesh Rana (MBA-8, AIMK)
  2. Sandhya-Krishnan (XLRI)
  3. Aditya Sanyal (Symbiosis Institute of International Business)
  4. Shailesh Gopale (JBIMS)
  5. Subhash Veeravalli (Jaypee Institute Of Information technolgoy university)
  6. Ravi Mevcha International Institute of Information Technology
  7. Shiju Thomas (IIMB)
  8. Narendra (MBA-9, AIMK)
  9. Rohit Nair (UVCE, Bangalore)

There is a list of other bloggers from various colleges.

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Why Wikipedia rules Google SERPs?

At many instances people have asked me this query, “Is Google giving wikipedia some priority in search?”. No, I do not think so (but they can do it easily, look at the coop custom search, it has a manual priority setting too). Search for any keyword, even the commercial keywords and you will find some wikipedia results. At instances you might find even more than one result for wikipedia under a search.

Wiki is ruling the search engine esp Google because of following reasons :-

  1. Incoming links: People love linking to wikipedia. I have not seen any other site which is so link attractive. Wikipedia attracts link. Bloggers love linking to wikipedia for any term. Wikipedia also acts as a dictionary, where people link to explain the work.
  2. Overall Site value: Total Pages indexed (10,600,000 in Google, 49,710,962 in yahoo) + Total backlinks (32,121,814 sitewide links in yahoo, which is close to Yahoo’s backlinks).
  3. Link distribution: Wikipedia gets links to almost all pages and thus it has a good link distribution as well.
  4. Relevant Anchor text: Most of the links comes with relevant anchor text for the pages.
  5. OnPage factors: OnPage factors are strong too (Yahoo still loves this factor).

In short it is very highly SEOptimized.

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Meet the Smartest and dumbest Google Blogger

Finally I am back home after spending some 58 hrs in office. Slept for 10 hrs and feeling a little fresher. Google uses blogs as their major communication tool. Google has many official blogs to communicate with its users. There are many Googlers who own a personal blog as well (many of these blogs are not active, see the list below). Also there are few who are ex-employees with a personal blog (see the list below).

Who is the smartest of all these?
Last year at AIMAA meet I talked about creating brands inside brands and took his blog as an example. He has created his own brand being inside Google. His blog is referred everywhere on the web. Everyone seems to love his everything. A post about his cat being sick got him 99 comments. He must have hired one person to handle comments. Yes, I am talking about none other than Matt Cutts. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/.

Meet the dumbest Google Blogger
Jen worked for Google between January 17, 2005 and January 28, 2005. It looks to me that he started the right thing in a wrong way. According to him, “i thought i could make connections to real people in the outside world and get first hand feedback”. Mark Jen is known for being terminated with cause by Google, Inc. for distributing corporate secrets in his personal blog, 99zeros.blogspot.com. Now he blogs at blog.plaxoed.com.

Smartest

VS

Dumbest
Matt cutts Mark Jen

Did Matt cutts learn blogging from Mark’s Mistake? Mark stopped the Google blog in Jan 2005 and Matt Cutts started from July 2005. Enjoy Google and Google blogs

Blogs by Google employees

  1. Adam Bosworth’s Weblog (Adam Bosworth)
  2. Alpie.net (David Alpert)
  3. Beyond Satire (Ellen Spertus)
  4. Bo Cowgill.com (Bo Cowgill)
  5. Brightly Colored Food (Chad Thornton)
  6. Continuations (Christine Davis)
  7. CrazyBob.org (Bob Lee)
  8. Dave Barr’s Journal (Dave Barr)
  9. Doctor Awesome
  10. Douwe Osinga Thinks (Douwe Osinga)
  11. Ego Food (Chris DiBona)
  12. Fury.com (Kevin Fox)
  13. Goldtoe Lemon.Nut (Jason Goldman)
  14. Graham’s Page of Stuph (Graham Waldon)
  15. Hixie’s Natural Log (Ian Hickson)
  16. Joe Beda Eighty Percent.net (Joe Beda)
  17. …that she might be a sufficient reason for young Candide (John Hawkins)
  18. Kimbalina.com (Kimbalina)
  19. Kraneland (David Krane)
  20. Marked for Dearth (Mark Ayzenshtat)
  21. Massless (Chris Wetherell)
  22. Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google and SEO (Matt Cutts)
  23. Natala la la la … (Natala Menezes, also at MSN Spaces)
  24. Nelson’s Weblog (Nelson Minar)
  25. The Oliver Project (Oliver Deighton)
  26. Otaku (Cédric Beust)
  27. Ovidiu Predescu’s Weblog (Ovidiu Predescu)
  28. persistent.info (Mihai Parparita)
  29. Piaw’s Blog (Piaw Na)
  30. Rahrah feminista (Lilly Irani)
  31. Shellen dot com (Jason Shellen)
  32. Shumans.com (Shuman Ghosemajumder)
  33. snarfed.org (Ryan Barrett)
  34. So Many Games (Greg Stein)
  35. Sowbug (Mike Tsao)
  36. The Other Eighty Percent (Chip Turner)
  37. Vedana (Eric Case)
  38. Weschan.com (Wesley Chan)
  39. Xenomachina (Laurence Gonsalves)
  40. xdelta (Josh Macdonald)
  41. Youngpup.net Journal (Aaron Boodman)

Some Ex-Googlers…

  1. Biz Stone, Genius (Biz Stone)
  2. Evhead (Evan Williams) – He was the CEO of pyra labs (Blogger creator)
  3. Mark Jen’s Life @ Plaxo (Mark Jen)

(list collected from blog.outer-court.com anbd other sources), please let me know if you come across other blogs. I will also go through the list once again.

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Quote 2: Be good at Plan B

As I mentioned yesterday, I will continue with quote of the day. (Just to add few lines) I am in office for last 48 hrs and will be leaving only after 8 hours. Office has improved with new guest rooms (hot water tub, ACs, Indian Home made food and everything needed), kudos to the CEO and VCs. I am working on few new products like “Simplified Email Blogging”, “Simplified Subscription and redefining Email Blogging”, “Redefining forum communication for non-techy people”.

Back to the quote, “Be good at Plan B”.
An inbuilt feature of any leader. Plan A is what is planned with all analysis and thoughts, which is predicted to do wonders. If Plan A works (as planned) it goes smoothly without a leader but if it fails you certainly needs a leader (and its you and only you). Hey, this is not something new for all of us, right? Let me take an example to explain.

You have called a party and given the contract to the best caterer in the town. Caterer did not turn up, some communication problems (or some other unavoidable circumstances). Plan A fails here and there is no Plan B. Plan B is your instant decision made out of your thoughts (it is not a backup plan). You certainly need to be good at that.

How to be good at Plan B? (7 tips)

  • Rule 1: Failures are a part of life, do smile at it. Be cool headed.
  • Rule 2: Do not play a blame game at this moment.
  • Rule 3: Do not go angry as you need to take a faster but smarter decision, you need a calm head.
  • Rule 4: Do not analyze the failure of plan A. It should be done later, current need is to make (act) Plan B. (My sentence, “Its ok, Its ok, it did not happen, lets see where we are and what we need to do now”)
  • Rule 5: Do not involve a lot of people in discussion at this moment, not everyone is in the same mood for Plan B.
  • Rule 6: Believe in yourself.
  • Rule 7: Take the involved people into confidence with a smile and apology. Trust me, people understand such situations.

Good Day to everyone. Take care

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Quote1: Move Forward with possible strength

When we can run , we will run ,
When we can walk , we will walk,
When we can crawl , we will crawl.
But we will not stop moving forward and will not fear failures

Great message, your availably for improvement can make you able for improvement (wow my own thought 🙂 ) do move forward in all possible ways. Many do not move forward as they fear of falling down. Fail, Fall but keep trying and keep moving. I can put the above sentence like this as well,

I did learn crawling before walking,
I did learn walking before running ,
Now I run.
But at all stages I did fall and raise again to move forward.

Enjoy the day. Quote for 1 March 2007. I will keep adding one quote everyday.

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Is MBA waste of money and time?

MBA, a buzz word in the job market and even a hotter one for matrimonial sites. But is it all that worth? There has been different school of thoughts on this topic. One of the most famous quotes belongs to none other than Seth Godin (author of “All marketers are liars”) where he said

“I get away with this heresy since I, in fact, have my own fancy MBA from Stanford. The fact is, though, that unless you want to be a consultant or an i-banker (where a top MBA is nothing but a screen for admission) it’s hard for me to understand why this is a better use of time and money than actual experience combined with a dedicated reading of 30 or 40 books.””

This is certainly not a new debate (/discussion) as I myself have participated in many, including the latest one with our HR manager (she is also a MBA) on new hiring strategies. Here is my take on the whole topic.

Is MBA waste of money and time?
According to me, MBA teaches you the alphabets of Business Administration. It teaches you how to form the possible right sentences of a business and what possible grammar made sense. I am very fortunate to be a semi MBA (as we had a special MCA with one year of MBA covered) and it helped me in the following ways:-

  1. It created a special interest for the corporate related topics. I started reading economic time during my marketing classes as I started understanding the alphabets of business (before which I never liked the pinkish paper). Now I hardly miss a day.
  2. It taught me how to learn. Thanks to all the entrepreneurial exposure. The classes by all entrepreneurs taught us new lessons (from the book of real business) be it about the backup or investment or recruiting. It helped me start with a better zero.
  3. Most importantly, it attached me to the big network of corporate people (alumni). For any work we can just give a call and make it work. This is really the biggest gain. You get a better network to start.”Our Network is better than our work”
    NIMC

The darker side of MBA

  1. It makes you rigid towards experimentation. When you are taught that these things will not work or these things will work, it starts prevailing over your gut feel. You try to do everything right with all statistic tools. Thats really hurts the innovation drive.
  2. We forget to learn from the nature. The best people have learned from the nature (the innocent customer, the simplest thoughts etc) not from the best people. Do not forget to observe the simple things. Also do not forget to learn from people who do not have a better degree than you. Accept people without a perception (a very difficult ask for a MBA).
  3. Not making our hands dirty, the biggest problem (from my personal experience). MBA prefers the managerial roles and do not prefer to do the dirty works (the real work). As a MBA delivering a presentation about work optimization is more desired than trying it on ourselves. Be more a leader and less a manager.
    MBA offensive video
    (Click on the above image to see the most offensive MBA video 🙂 )

Another Article(different but thematic) which talks about the Serious talent shortage and lack of experienced manpower in India for few sectors. It says, “India Inc ties up with B-schools for made-to-order curriculum”. Also it says,

“Serious talent shortage and lack of experienced manpower, especially in emerging sectors like retail is pushing companies like Dabur, Tesco, Patni and HDFC to launch specialised courses with leading institutes in the country for their current and potential employees. “

NO I do not support this. Such courses will neither do good for corporates not the students, do not try to form the business sentences forcibly but help them learn the alphabets of business with a free mind.

Final word
MBA is certainly not the waste of money and time. It never makes you a master of business administrator but it helps you become a better student of business. It helps you start with a better zero and rest is all you.

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My Day – A learning one

I wasted another day on useful things. After the audio blog post I got weird(but approved) comments through mails and IM on my voice. Thanks for that. The next crazy thing I did was to delete all the 765 spams waiting for approval (oops disapproval). I scanned few pages of these spams to make sure I am not deleting a genuine comment. After scanning 7 pages (with no genuine comments) full of crappy britney,tom and all other non-sense stuff I decided to delete all. Sorry if I deleted your comment in this process. Please comment again and I will keep my spam box clean.

We had our second last meeting before AGM for CGPF. I was amazed at the analysis done for the staff conferences (on Feb 14 – Feb 15). Every thing so well documented and arranged. Targets, strategies and discussions for the upcoming year took almost 1.5 hrs of the total 2 hrs meeting. Fund collection, real estate plans and all were a part of it. I was feeling a little sleepy because of the heavy lunch I had (a marriage party). Now I need to draft few letters, prepare PPTs for pre-AGM sessions. We have decided to go to all the churches for a unique PPT presentation (looking forward for it).

After the meeting I attended the class on Angels and Demons where we learned about Lucifer and the dark angel team. A subject which I always ignored consciously. Now I am back to all the pending tasks. Will finish my half done post now. Take care and keep spamming.