How I Work: Bill Gates

On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you’ll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity.

Yeah, I used to agree, but guess what: I switched from a triple-seventeen-inch PC setup to a single 20-inch iMac and haven’t looked back a single time. Not because the Mac is so good that it’s worth giving up two screens, but because the Mac is so good you don’t have to crowd your desk with monitors in order to be productive.

Seriously, three screens and all he uses is a mail client? That’s so… Windows.

We’re at the point now where the challenge isn’t how to communicate effectively with e-mail, it’s ensuring that you spend your time on the e-mail that matters most. I use tools like “in-box rules” and search folders to mark and group messages based on their content and importance.

It’s funny that way he phrases it like Outlook (he doesn’t name it here, but does later on) is so powerful when he just implied in the previous paragraph that the most important “tool” he “uses” actually is a personal assistant summarizing the thousands of emails he receives from people he hasn’t whitelisted. Yeah, everyone should have one of those.

The future of e-mail (or any other communication or collaboration system) shouldn’t ever be decided by someone who has an assistant. (And I’m not targeting Bill Gates in particular here.)

Outlook also has a little notification box that comes up in the lower right whenever a new e-mail comes in.

OMG that’s so cool!

Uh, sorry, couldn’t help myself.

(Okay, neither Growl nor Mail.appetizer are included with a default Mail.app install. But on the other hand creating an Applescript rule is trivial.)