Discardia_ More Life, Less Stuff - Dinah Sanders [34]
1. Draw a line in the sand. Create a label called “Old Inbox” and apply this label to everything older than 48 hours. Give it a color you dislike so you'll be motivated to get rid of that stuff. (If your mail program doesn't have labels, then drag everything to a new folder called “Old Inbox,” but you will need to be tough on yourself to keep dealing with its contents until it's empty.)
2. Above the line, practice good inbox habits as described above. Get clean and clear about everything in the inbox that's newer than the “Old Inbox” label. Live above the line and use search to dig for things below it only if needed.
3. In just 10 minutes at a time, knock the old stuff into shape. Whenever you can spare the time—but at least once a day—set a timer for 10 minutes and process the old stuff following the same good habits you’re doing above the line. Do not let yourself get distracted in that time. It's just 10 minutes. You can do this! The best part? It turns out that it doesn't take very long to get through the old stuff, even if you have hundreds or even thousands of “Old Inbox” messages. Make use of the ability to sort by sender or subject to help you knock chunks of messages into the right place quickly.
Mastering your inbox will reduce your stress, help focus your time on the most important actions, and give you the ability to respond thoughtfully when response is appropriate. The calm and control it creates can transform the way others perceive you, building trust and respect.
More email and inbox tips
Before we leave the topic of email and inboxes, here are a few high-level tips.
Hoard your attention. It is vital that you take control over distracting default settings. There is tremendous value in turning off all audio and visual alerts to the arrival of new mail. You’re not dead, so of course you have new mail or you will shortly. Unless your job is purely to read email and do nothing else that takes longer than a minute, you should not let your email flow dictate your day. If that is your job, your email is already open anyhow and you’ll see the new mail arriving. Turn off the alerts.
Work on your priorities, not on what's freshest. Don't press the “Check Mail” button like a lab rat hoping to get a tasty food pellet. Yes, okay, you might get something you can answer quickly and scratch off as done, but that will not be as important as what is currently on the top of your to-do list. Do what you already spent time and energy deciding was most important. Dive in, knock out a task appropriate to your current resources and energy level, then surface and check email quickly before diving in again on the next prioritized task. By “quickly,” I mean “processing.” For anything that generates a new task for your list, only ask the question, “Is this more important than what I was planning to do next?” If the answer is no, which it usually is, carry on as planned. Merlin Mann said it beautifully: “Don't let the blur of movement try to replace one elegantly completed task.”
Pay for checking email. If you find yourself checking mail far more often than actually results in a change in your plan of action, start forcing yourself to complete the next task on your list before you are allowed to check again. Quit the mail program if you need to keep yourself from auto-piloting back into your inbox. The task list—whatever you use to track the next steps for your projects and other high priority work—is where you need to land whenever you're not sure what comes next.
Set a good example. As you want your email processing to be quick and inspire clarity, so do those who receive email from you. Write good email. Be brief. Use good subject lines. For example, don’t title it, “About next week's meeting”; instead, write, “Tuesday 8/18 ABC meeting agenda & goals.” As customer experience consultant Mark Hurst suggested in his book Bit Literacy, “frontload” your messages to state the one key piece of information right up front; then, only if needed, write more to support