I mentioned a few days ago that one of my goals is to get more organized and that one of the things I’m trying to do is Inbox Zero. This is really a pretty simple concept, your inbox should be for incoming e-mail only and should be empty when you’re done. Your goal is to take each message and either;
- Trash it
- Archive it in an ARCHIVE folder
- Reply to it & then archive it
- If it’s a message you need to save and reference quickly for a little bit, like an online receipt, plane reservation etc then move it to a HOLD folder
- If you don’t have time to reply, but you need to, move it to a FOLLOWUP folder.
- Put newsletters/blog entries you want to read later in a REAMDE folder Ok I admit it, I cheated with this, this isn’t an official “Zero Inbox” folder and I’m sure Merlin Mann would scold me. However, there are messages I want to read more thoroughly some day but I don’t have time to read right now, so I made a ‘README’ folder. This is admittedly just another archive since I rarely read anything in there, but it helped me get it out of my inbox so… don’t judge me)
I’m sure some people are wondering why I’m making this seem like a big deal. Realize that I use e-mail for communications not just with friends & family but also for many work related needs, so I literally get several hundered messages each day. Seriously.
So… I’ve gotten really good at emptying my inbox. Part of this is just diligence that it’s a routine I’m used to. Part of this is actually unsubscribing from mailing lists I never read or from e-mail newsletters/ads from businesses I don’t care that much about.
A few mantras I repeat to myself as I’m sorting my e-mail;
- I am not the internet archive – I am a admittedly a digital packrat, I tend to save way too much e-mail. Part of this involved me saving messages to mailing lists I’m on cause I or others might need to reference an old post someday. So I had to force myself to remember ;
- The lists are archived elsewhere
- It’s not my job to save this, no one else is expecting me too
- I’m wasting my time/space saving something I’ll likely never need
- … oh AND the messages weren’t really that important anyways
- I have more important things to do – For messages that have a subject I’m only kind of interested in, I need to remember I have a to-do list of more important things to do than read messages that aren’t immediately relevant. There is no quiz later proving I read each and every message that came into my mailbox. If it’s not a personal message, odds are there’s little or nothing in it I care about. If I really think I should read it later I put it in my README folder.
- I can find it later – This is for messages archive. If it’s a message I feel I should save for later, for whatever reason, part of what helps me get this out of my inbox is that I remind myself ‘I can find this later if I need it’.
- Trash is a 30 day archive – My trash is set to auto-delete any messages after 30 days. Therefore, for things like logs and such where I may need to reference them soon but not save them forever, I remind myself ‘Well, I can always find it in my trash folder if I need it’. I feel a bit of a hypocrit saying this since I have, on several occasions in my previous job, lectured people that they shouldn’t keep important documents in their trash folder etc (seriously, people did this) so I remind myself before I ever do this ‘This document isn’t that important anyways, even if it was lost’
So as I’ve mentioned I’ve gotten pretty good at trimming down my inbox, but now I’ve got way too much stuff in my ‘followup’ folder, and it’s a little scary to go look in there cause unlike my previous inbox, everything in my followup folder really needs my time & attention. It’s like walking into a crowded room of people who need to talk to you (yikes, that’s a scary visual for me). I’m still figuring out plans on how to deal with organizing and ‘zero’-ing this mailbox, what I’ve come up with so far is;
- If it’s a bigger task, add it to my Asana.com to-do list. Yes, this is like moving it to yet another folder, I know, but by promoting to this level I’m acknowledging it’s really a priority and I can rank it in comparison to other tasks. I can also invite others to this project if it’s something bigger than just me.
- Schedule It – I haven’t done this much yet, but I know it’s the next step. Actually setting aside time for a task to get it done.
- For e-mail replies, I need to remember ‘Brevity is the soul of wit’, or perhaps K.I.S.S (Keep it Simple Stupid), I don’t need to write an essay, a few short sentances is probably enough. If an e-mail really requires an essay response then it’s probably a project that should be prioritized and possibly scheduled.
I’ll let you know when/if my followup folder gets organized. I’ll put ‘write a followup blog entry’ on my to do list right now 🙂
