I was busy typing away on my laptop yesterday when suddenly, a window flashed on the screen, quickly closed, and my computer began restarting.

The window was nothing other than the “Windows Update restart now” dialog box. I don’t know what the default button is, but considering windows will “click” on a button based on keystrokes, and I was typing at a fast pace (as I am known to do), I had no time to stop typing to avoid unintended activation of an unwanted feature.

In other words: Please tell me what moron would design an operating system that works this way?

In my ranting, I did manage to begin calling Microsoft to complain, a task I quickly gave up on due to its inevitable futility; instead, I focused on using my friend Google to find the best way to turn off the damned restart now prompting from Windows Update.

One of the most common suggested solutions was to turn off Windows Update. I didn’t want to do this, because I wanted Windows Update running (to tell me when updates are available but not to install them for me).

The best solution is to enable a setting named, “No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Update installation.” This should be turned on by default, but it isn’t. To do it, you can use the group policy editor, or you can hack the registry. Using the group policy editor is safer, unless you’re used to hacking the registry.

If you’re a Windows user, I highly recommend turning on this setting. Now that I have it turned on, I’ll avoid the inevitable five-minute rant on poor user experience design that comes around every time I install updates on my computer and resist the urge to restart immediately (which is all the time).

One thing I’ve learned to appreciate more as I’ve gotten older is simplicity. Less confusion, less clutter, less distractions can yield less stress and more productivity. (Note: I appreciate it much more than I am actually successful at doing it.)

One area where simplicity is important is in web design. A recent article by Smashing Magazine, “Principles of Minimalist Web Design, With Examples,” does a fair job at illustrating the importance of simplicity on the web, even though it’s focus is more on graphical design (not my specialty!) than interface design.

A link in the aforementioned article goes to an article, “The Minimalist Principle: Omit Needless Things,” by zenhabits, which is the source of the remainder of my comments in this post.

An exercise in minimalism: reducing clutter

To do this exercise, you’re going to need a medium-sized box. Take your box and go into a room in your house (or office) that you want to simplify. Take a deep breath, and…

Step 1: Identify and Collect

Take a look around the room. (Don’t look inside drawers or cabinets; only take note of what you can see without interacting with anything.) Consider the importance and value of the items in it. After surveying, pick the item that you feel has the least importance and value and put it in the box.

Now, look around the room again. Pick the next least important/valuable item, and put it in the box. Repeat this process until the only items left in the room are ones you can not live without — they are too important or valuable to let go of.

To illustrate this exercise, I did it in my office at work. Looking around, I threw the following items in the box:

• A half-empty bag of sunflower seeds
• Three honey-herb Ricola throat lozenges
• Half a tube of Ritz crackers
• An AM/FM walkman with no headphones
• A used iTunes gift card
• Five white #10 envelopes
• An empty box for a gooseneck desk lamp
• A pile of papers and a manila folder which have been sitting untouched for at least six weeks
• A stack of other people’s business cards
• A small, empty plastic container
• An empty stainless steel thermos

Step 2: Consider and Take Action

Sit down and take one item out of the box. Ask yourself the following five questions. Consider your answers and how they impact what you should do with that item.

1. When was the last time I needed, used, or noticed this item? If you haven’t used something in a long time, or taken notice of it, it’s something that you probably don’t need.
2. If not for this exercise, when would be the next time that I’d need, use, or notice this item? It’s one thing if you haven’t used it in a long time, and another if you don’t expect to use it for a long time, either.
3. Does it provide long-term sentimental value? Sentimental items are often hard to give up, so think hard about whether this one item will really be in your shoebox in your golden years (see below).
4. If it wasn’t here, would I miss it? That 5.25″ floppy disk hanging on my wall is a cool conversation piece, but I wouldn’t miss it if it was gone.
5. Can it be easily replaced? After all, I could always find another 5.25″ floppy disk, or another reason to start a conversation.

Depending on your answers to each question, you should start understanding how much you need and value each item. You may choose to re-purpose an item to a different room (my empty thermos goes into a kitchen cabinet), store it in a more appropriate place (envelopes in my desk drawer), or put it in your shoebox (see below).

If you conclude that you really don’t need an item, try selling it on Amazon or eBay or craigslist (if it has any resale value); otherwise, recycle it or toss it in the trash.

The Shoebox

In considering items with long-term sentimental value, I follow the shoebox principle: Everything I want to keep long-term for sentimental reasons must fit inside a single shoebox. If the shoebox is full, I must remove something in order to make room for something new.

This may sound draconian, but it yields two benefits. First, it gives you reason to visit your shoebox every now and then; second, it forces you to keep only the items that have the most value, and value the items you choose to keep.

(Fortunately for me, I wear size 12 shoes, so my shoebox is larger than average; I suggest folks with small feet get a shoebox from a large-footed friend or neighbor.)

What have you gained?

In the end, take a look around at the room you simplified. Odds are, it feels larger, is less cluttered and easier to clean, and ultimately more enjoyable to be in. Keep doing this for each room in your house and office. Taking before and after pictures helps visualize your progress. When all is said and done, you’ll have taken your first step to simplifying your life!

Some days I get over a hundred emails. Often, 90% of those are a waste of my time, and that is after excluding junk mail and related marketing mumbo-jumbo. Why so much email fluff, not-quite-spam-spam? It’s because people don’t consider the human cost of sending an email.

The Email Cost Algorithm

To understand the productivity cost of an email, we need to consider the factors that go in to an email, and how they correlate to time.

First, some facts and assumptions regarding email reading speed.

• All emails are intended to be read by all recipients.
• The average American can read and comprehend at a rate between 250 and 400 words per minute.
• People read about 25% slower on a computer screen than on paper.
• We will assume the typical email reading speed is 250 words per minute.

Second, some facts and assumptions about email writing speed.

• Every word in an email must be composed by the author.
• Any text copy/pasted yields no net benefit to composition speed, since the author must first identify the source text and conduct the copy/paste operation.
• The average computer user composes 19 words per minute.

Third, we’ll present some ancillary facts.

• Typically, a person will spend 15-20 seconds reading a common email.
• Typically, a person will spend 51 seconds reading a newsletter email.
• The average worker in the US receives about 56 email messages per day.

You can take your best guess as to how much time email takes up based on all that information. My back-of-the-envelope guess is that the average worker will spend about 30 minutes a day composing email, and 30 minutes a day reading email.

That being said, how do you avoid wasting people’s time with email? By knowing when you should and should not send an email.

You should always send an email when:

• It is after hours, there is no other way to get in touch with someone, and you must make sure they received information from you at a given time. (Example: A client wants to know that their server is back online. You bring it online at 4AM. Send them an email, unless they explicitly told you to call them and wake them up.)
• You need a record of your correspondence or need to maintain an audit trail that can be used to prove (or disprove) facts in the future.

You should sometimes send an email when:

• You need to send a file or files to one or more people. Before sending, consider other solutions, such as YouSendIt, ShareFile, or 2Large2Email, to send your files.
• You are sending information to an large number of recipients and have no more efficient way to communicate to them. (Example: Your company has no intranet and you need to distribute a new HR policy. A better solution than email is to hire a web development company to build your intranet, then post the HR policy on the intranet.)

You should never send an email when:

• Typing the email takes longer than picking up the phone, dialing a phone number, waiting for someone to answer, and saying what you need to say.
• You are sending an email to people who don’t need to read it. If a recipient isn’t expected to provide feedback to your email, and the recipient doesn’t have a need to know the information contained in your email, they don’t need to receive it. In other words: carefully review every recipient in the To: and Cc: fields; if they don’t need to know, don’t waste their time.

Remember — if it isn’t important, don’t waste someone’s time with it; and if there’s a faster way to do it, do it the faster way.