Inbox Zero E-mail Management

I may be late in finding this, but I have been living it for about 3 years now. Inbox Zero is great for everyone, and programs like Apple Mail and GMail make it easy because you can Archive messages in a single folder and search them easily. It’s interesting to peek at another person’s Inbox (without looking at the content) to see if they are an Inbox Zero person or not.

I think half the fun of watching this video is tracking the GenX/GenY speak of Merlin Mann, who operates 43 Folders. “The default state of an e-mail should not be ‘keep sitting here until I start weeping’.”

4 Comments

This is THE perfect background music for going through (and deleting) your email! Thanks, Ted.

So along those same lines which todo manager do you use if any? I have fooled with a few but currently use Mac Mail. Just downloaded OmniFocus and Lifebalance to look at those.

Thanks for this video, I had not seen it but have been struggling with this issue and will give this a try. I recently decided to do email mostly at night since I can handle email even when I'm tired and thereby save prime time during the day to work on projects.

Barry

I'd been reading GTD (Getting Things Done) but this spring I saw this video and actually put it into use, and sonnamabeech, it works. I'm getting more stuff done.

Now I'm working on the next phases of GTD. I've never been so organized in my life. Lots more room for growth, but it's a simple program and it works.

Barry/Dave,

As a student of LEAN, I use the coolest most sophisticated piece of technology to manage my To-do lists – the back of a closet door, some post-it notes, and 3 images of the Washington Metro.

I took the GTD course a few years ago and I learned just a few simple things that keeps me at Inbox Zero.

The other thing I do is not allow To-do lists to be created in the first place by using the Zero Inbox method for more than my e-mail….

I'll post about it today or tomorrow,

Ted

Ted Eytan, MD