Chris Brogan recently shared what he calls Anywhen—that communications should strive to be time-shiftable as most issues are simply not urgent.  Anywhen is the premise behind what AwayFind promotes, so I’m linking to his posts here and elaborating on how to make Anywhen a reality.

AwayFind helps people to close their inbox so they can time-shift their responsibilities to when it’s most appropriate.  And using AwayFind’s contact form can help to set expectations on responsiveness.  But a product alone won’t enable one to time-shift their work or set the appropriate norms.  So I’m going to go through a few of Chris’s points, and add some suggestions for making them happen.

The items quoted below come straight from Chris’s Anywhen Manifesto.  I’ve grouped several of his points together for the purpose of this post.

We will push back on the unintentional urgency people put on us.  We will create in ways that promote time-shifting-friendly consumption.  We will attempt to respond in a timely fashion, but as it meets our other duties and obligations.  We will do our damnedest, but forgive our occasional drowning spells.

In essence, the best way to combat others’ growing demand for your immediate attention is to set their expectations through your actions:

• Practice what you preach—don’t reply to people’s messages right away.  If you do, delay the sending of the message (this is possible with desktop email clients but not on the web).  It’s important to be responsive; but you don’t want people to expect that you’re always available
• Be honest about your habits.  Whether you decide to use a service like AwayFind or if you just let people know your habits on your website, contact form, or voicemail…it’s helpful to set expectations
• Even with the best of systems, things will slip through the cracks.  We shouldn’t be hard on others for this (sending a gentle reminder a week or so later is reasonable), and we should also accept this in ourselves (there are things we simply must do now, and sometimes they get in the way of promptness with others.)  It’s okay to say no, be told no, or for the occasional delay

We will seek out time-shifting-friendly means of interacting (like Google Wave).

Investing in a little technology and thinking seriously about one’s workflow can make a huge impact on how long basic activities take.  Coordinating appointments through products like TimeBridge, TimeDriver and Tungle, utilizing Wave when working through a problem with a group, or managing a project through Basecamp or ActionMethod rather than email—these have huge benefits in both clarity and time-saving.

At my SXSW panel we’ll talk about the strengths and weaknesses of new communications methods.  One of the discussions will be how today’s work expectations have made it necessary to use collaboration tools that go beyond email…and that it’s probably worth it to invest time in learning tools that might not seem intuitive out of the box.  Keeping things simple may be good for some tools, but sometimes it’s worthwhile for us users to struggle past the learning curve.

We believe that time-shifting is every bit as important as work-shifting.  It’s not all about realtime.

Don’t ever forget that the meaning is what comes out, not what goes in.  Sometimes a breakthrough comes from 3 weeks at your desk.  Other times it comes from 2 hours at the beach.  Some projects merit a 30 minute brainstorming session.  Some projects do better from independent brainstorming and email discussion.

It’s not about how you get to your destination, it’s that you get there at all.  It’s not that we shouldn’t take part in the process, but we should keep our eye on the goal and not worry so much that there are different ways to get there.  Real time is possible, but it’s often not preferable or practical.

Here at AwayFind we’re not just trying to sell a product, we’re trying to promote a way of working.  Thanks, Chris, for helping to give clarity to something we believe in so strongly.

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