The look of your Inbox

John Porcaro has a great post entitled Getting Things Done, which started with a cry for help about his 544 eMails in his Inbox. He then continues quoting an article by Julie Daniel entitled Keeping your Inbox Real. In short, there is lots of stuff in your inbox that shouldn’t be there. This could be an eMail that you just didn’t want to delete, just sitting there, or an eMail that you need to reply to but still need time for, just sitting there, or an eMail you did reply to and are waiting for an answer, just sitting there, or more. The idea is to build a system that will allow you to remove all those out of your inbox and have a second system that allows you to see what you still have to do. All in all, it sounds reasonable, but that’s often the case with all these time saving things. I do actually manage to keep my mailbox down to just 5–20 eMails, so I am still doing ok. I move most of the stuff but I should have a better system of managing the eMails that are just down there waiting for something to happen.

I do already have a good sheet for organising my day which I might post here one time when I put a few more twists to it, but there is always room for improvement.