Habits – Pristine Inboxes
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Baby Steps
I’m a big fan of making big changes via tiny baby steps.
As part of my goal to become more organized (and by association, more productive), my first baby step is The Pristine Inbox.
An impossible dream? Perhaps, but I do not believe so.
The Pristine Inbox
The idea is simple. Email inboxes should be empty, except for unread items.
Immediately upon reading an email, I will respond/archive/delete it.
Since implementing this rule, I have been able to respond to new emails more quickly. I have implemented a series of folders or gmail tags to categorize emails I want to refer back to later. The amount of time I spend in my inbox has decreased significantly. I have not let an email rot at the bottom of my inbox for months, intending to reply “when I have time”.
I have developed a better sense for winnowing through emails that are important, sensing those emails that need to be archived, and quickly responding to emails that need feedback.
Plus, it feels GREAT to have an empty inbox, I don’t mind tellin’ ya. New emails seem exceptionally important without all that other stuff in there.
It also means I don’t check my email unless I have time to respond to anything that comes in. If I’m in the middle of a project or writing, I just don’t check my email. Anything that crops up can wait until I have ten minutes free to reply.
Work and Home
I’ve implemented this habit both at work and at home, and past the initial two days it took to clean out all the garbage I had lying around “just in case”, it’s been smooth sailing. The search feature on my email clients ensures that nothing I save in a folder is ever lost – if I can’t guess where I put it, I can always search for it.
At work, my new reply speed awards me a reputation for efficiency.
At home, not having loose ends hanging, waiting for me to respond to them has given my spirits a boost, as well. I wouldn’t have believed it, but those to-be-answered emails festering at the bottom of my inbox actually contribute a measurable amount of stress.
Result
I recommend the habit, without reservations. I believe that some people would have a more difficult time achieving an empty inbox, but I do believe the effort is worth it. Two thumbs way, WAY up.
I tried this once before after a coworker of mine made fun of my full inbox, and I’d like to try it again since I have new coworkers who very much enjoy glancing at and commenting on whatever happens to be on my screen at any given time. That’s not only rude, it’s embarrassing, because I then feel like I have to justify MY PRIVATE EMAILS to people who basically amount to first-name basis strangers.
Here’s my problem: I’m apparently an idiot. My favorite thing in the world is organizing crap on my computer, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to effectively organize my Gmail. I really need to sit down with it and spend some time thinking about the best organization method for me, but tips would be ultra-rad since you seem to have it all in check :D
@Courtney
Toss me an email and I’ll work through any help I might be able to give. I have a feeling a comment thread would become unmanageable (knowing us). <3
Tami, check out GTD Inbox3 for Gmail. It’s a fantastic way to organize your email, and I think you might find even more utility for it if you combine it with other productivity tools (Evernote comes to mind).
The version I’ve linked is new, in Alpha, but is pretty stable and robust.
Take a page from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done?
I actually have been trying to do this at the office and it isn’t working for me. It might help if I deleted the 10-11k emails in my non-archived inbox instead of trying to archive/organize them. ;) Instead, I’ve just been using flags and bcc-ing myself to things I need to keep on top of.
@Steve
Thank you for the recommendations!
@Brad-o
Egads! Good grief, man. You definitely can’t keep a clean inbox if you’ve got that much stuff lying around.
Maybe set up some filters for your inbox – most inboxes will automatically archive into filters for you (gmail, thunderbird). Filter by keyword, by sender, etc, etc. That might help do some automatic filtering for you, and cut back on how much you have to do manually.
@Tami
I already filter a bunch out of my inbox. The 10k messages are still in my inbox and are usually of the hand-typed variety. I get quite a bit of email on a day-to-day basis.