Thought Press.

At work, some people have said to me, “How do you keep your inbox so empty?” I see some people’s inboxes and they are so full of emails that they don’t know what else to do other than cherry-pick through them. Some items are even unread! <gasp> They have to scroll, too! I see some people’s Gmail and they never archive! They keep everything in the inbox–missing the purpose of Gmail.

One of my colleagues has a folder called “Pending - Immediate”, in which she seems to throw most things. I’m not sure what exactly “pending - immediate” means. Enter Inbox Zero, a concept that I follow and its as simple as determining whether an email is actionable. You don’t just check your email; you process it:

1. Delete (or archive) - Simply delete things you don’t need, junk. You may want to create a single folder called ‘Archive’ to which you drag these items you don’t need, but can search for in the future.
2. Delegate - Have someone else take care of it. What I do, if it’s something I want to check up on at some point or am waiting to hear back, I set a timer to remind myself to follow up, and/or I BCC myself when I forward the email and stick that in a ‘Waiting For’ folder. No ‘Pending - Immediate’ needed here!
3. Respond - I always try to be prompt to respond to emails if needed. These emails should be kept to five sentences or fewer.
4. Defer - If the email is something you can’t act on now or should be dealt with at a future date, defer it. Set a timer to remind you and place it in another spot. I typically keep these to do’s in a ‘Next Actions’ folder.
5. Do - If it takes two or three minute, do it immediately.

And now your inbox should be empty! There should be no excuses in keeping something there. For projects (take up more than one task), I don’t put it in my ‘Next Actions‘ folder, but I create a project folder within my ‘Current Projects‘ folder in which I store any related items that I am collecting for the project. Once the project is complete, I drag the project folder to ‘Past Projects‘. And it’s out of my vision!

Then if I want a quick at-glance view of my Next Actions, I created a simple spreadsheet in which I list all the tasks, their due date, whether the status is “waiting for” (WF) or not, its importance, difficulty, and any details related to the task. I have it automatically sort by WF, then due date, then importance. Then I just check them off or update the status as I go! Some at work have called me a machine.

>> Check out Merlin Mann’s presentation on Inbox Zero to Google employees.
>> Related GTD / Productivity stuff; Life