Oh my goodness, friends, I am in love. I recently watched this video by Merlin Mann, and now I have a new mission in life.
My Inbox is a ridiculous wasteland of thousands of emails, most of which I will never read. I do need to keep some of them for future reference, and a few of them for sentimental reasons, but the majority can just GO AWAY. E-mail hoarding is a Bad Thing.
I’ve realised I can’t bring myself to just select everything and delete – G-d forbid I should miss something. So now I have set myself two goals related to my Inbox (or rather, Inboxes as I have at least two email addresses I have to pay attention to).
1. Delete or Archive, Delegate, Respond, Defer or Do everything that comes into my Inbox, every day.
2. Spend 15 minutes every day doing the same with the ridiculous backlog.
How about you, are you ready to aim for Inbox Zero?
Good reminder. My own policy is to set a timer for 10 minutes when I first switch on my computer in the morning and use this time to scan my consolidated in box for 5 email addresses.
During this scan, I delete, or archive in one of about 20 folders, every email I can. I do not read any newsletters, follow links to blogs or take any other action unless the email is genuinely both urgent and important.
Later in the day, after I have accomplished a few important tasks, I attend to the emails that do require attention, then repeat the scan and find I can delete many more.
Today being Sunday and with rain preventing outside chores, I made an exception and visited your blog as soon as I saw your email.
Peter Wright recently posted…Genetic negative thinking and non-existent mental disorders.