I'm still working on my multi-forked plan to get away from email all together, as well as getting as much as I can to be tied to a browser rather than some piece of hardware. It sounds like Jason beat me to getting everything running through gmail as I've only gotten my personal and mailing list e-mails set up through it, but am planning to get the others into the system sometime tomorrow.

I spoke to another person today about how generally in office environments IM is considered unproductive and email is still the primary form of communication, even though it's endlessly less efficient. I rattled off Tantek's example of how many steps are involved with each option and some of my personal accounts of how forcing IM over e-mail is working. I'm definitely noticing an improvement in some areas. I'm definitely having conversations in 5-10 back and for IMs that would have been 20+ e-mails in one day easy. I'm really excited about this realization and where it's going to take me. I'm already finding more time because I'm spending less of it in a mail program, though I've got far too much waiting to fill it. I have to remind myself to actively put aside some of that for me and not just for work. My stack of books to read is growing too quickly at this moment thanks to the likes of Tim Ferriss and Christopher Hitchens.

Last weekend I spent a lot of time away from my laptop and hanging out with people I click with. Awesome discussions were had and I came back feeling revived in ways I'd forgotten about. I'm considering a weekly laptop free day. AIM on my phone paired with twitter will allow any communication that is needed, and will give me more time for interesting books and people. We'll see, as always I'll keep you posted.