Discardia_ More Life, Less Stuff - Dinah Sanders [33]
GTD?
Those questions may sound familiar because they’re a core part of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” approach, which I highly recommend as a source of tools for your toolbox. This approach emphasizes the importance of ubiquitous capture to get things out of your head and into a single, trusted system. It doesn’t matter whether that system is paper or electronic; it does matter that you use it and you trust it. GTD advises using as few inboxes as will work for you to hold things about which you haven’t yet decided and to process those inboxes at least once a day to answer the question, “Is any action required from me on this?” for each item.
Another essential part of the GTD approach is to conduct a weekly review to clear your mind, regain perspective, and check up on all your active projects. Less frequent reviews should also be done to stay in touch with your bigger picture. (You’ll encounter my version of a big review in the section on taking a stress-free vacation in “Symptom #24: Rushing” in Part III.)
GTD coaches and I agree that even 45 minutes a week of pulling back to review where you stand and where you want to be heading will create a radical upswing in your ability to react constructively throughout the rest of your time.
Software supporting GTD techniques continues to proliferate and improve. I use OmniFocus on the Mac, but there are also GTD plugins for software, such as Outlook and Lotus Notes. Whatever your software environment, it’s worth reading Getting Things Done, trying out at least some of the techniques it promotes, and searching online to see if there are ways to integrate it into the tools you already use.
Email sorting in action
You can immediately delete most email (or throw it into a single archive). My approach (using Gmail) is to scan over the unread subject lines, check the boxes for anything that you can archive without opening (for example, “John Doe is now following you on Twitter”), and click “Archive.”
Then, if I saw any spam on the first pass (mercifully rare now thanks to better filters built into good mail applications), I rescan (faster this time because I've already read the subjects once), check the boxes, and click “Report Spam” to clear those out of my way.
I deal with the remaining items one by one, reading enough to determine the appropriate action. That action could be noting a task or future event by copying information to my to-do list or calendar (deferring); forwarding the message with brief comments and usually an improved subject line to someone else, if appropriate (in other words, delegating); replying, if it will take less than two minutes (doing); or labeling, if I need to keep the email for the moment to support a future task, including any responses that would take more than two minutes (again, deferring).
The goal of the two-minute “doing” limit is to avoid duplicating efforts on low-return tasks. You've spent enough energy and time to decide the necessary action so, rather than having to remind yourself again later, do the fast actions now.
Beware that the “it’ll just take five or 10 minutes” emails really add up. Be firm with yourself about the two-minute limit and come back to the longer tasks after you've finished processing. Know what you have, and do the right next item instead of the one that happens to be next in your inbox.
Building this habit into your daily routine will change your relationship with email. Instead of a murky pit of unknown obligations, your inbox will be a functional space. Repeatedly throughout your day you will know exactly what's there, if anything, and what commitments it represents when it isn't empty.
Handling old email
I hear some of you crying, “All these best practices are well and good, but what do I do with the email backlog that is clogging up my inbox?” I assure you that you don't need to deal with all of it at once. You