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How to empty your inbox (140-character edition)
My latest attempt to teach email management as quickly and easily as possible. From my Twitter feed...
Empty inbox is so easy! Once a day, move all todos to a todo list & archive everything else.Takes 1 minute. Doing the work is the hard part.
As always, I recommend my todo list Good Todo as a really easy tool for managing action items. Simply forward the email to goodtodo.com and delete it from your inbox. (Watch this short video to see it happen.)
See also my previous (and somewhat longer) attempts to explain email management...
• How to empty your inbox - an even simpler description
Why not use your inbox itself as the todo list? I like using Gmail for this because the archive button makes it so simple (just like checking things off a list) and you don't have to manage the information in more than one place. Not to say that Good Todo is not also useful :)
Lots of reasons... for example, how do you defer or hide a todo that's not relevant today? How do you edit a todo? Or se priority different from the order it arrived? All difficult in an inbox but trivial in Good Todo.
I guess different strokes for different folks. My method is basically that I leave it in the inbox. If it's read then it's done. If it's ongoing it gets flagged/starred. If I am looking for it later I search. Too many ppl at my work file things in outlook folders and then they can never find it later, so leaving it there easily search-able works for me.
I guess my question is not "how" to empty your inbox, but "why"? I just don't see the value of re-filing things or even using e-mail for a to-do list. I delete what's not relevant, keep everything that is. My inbox is large but not unmanageable. This whole approach to emptying an inbox seems more like a personal preference than any kind of useful productivity system.
Have any of the commenters read "Bit Literacy"? The short blog post here is really out of context and meant for those that understand the why's of an empty inbox (read the book - it's inexpensive and a quick read.) I utilize the empty inbox every day, I have AD&D and some of Mark's techniques have made my work life a LOT more manageable.
If you sit down and analyze what you are doing, by using your inbox for what it was NEVER designed for, you are the ones who are actually double handling and constantly re-prioritizing tasks. Search for a task, please. Don't you first have to REMEMBER that task is there before you can search for it? Why are you searching for it? Did someone else remind you it had to be done?
There truly is a psychological effect of an empty inbox at the end of the day. It's a good thing. Bits are heavy. I stopped letting them weigh me down. Seriously, if you want to know what I speak of, read the book.
Thanks a ton Mark!