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June 03, 2006
The Empty Inbox
Our days are spent in a constant battle to empty our inbox. The state of our inbox is a barometer of how busy our day has been; we judge how much we've accomplished by the number of emails read, handled and deleted. Email isn't just for communication, it's our to-do list, our file cabinets, our lives. How many of us send ourselves emails as reminders or notes? After all, if it's not in Outlook, will we ever find it again? Will we remember?
According to the New York Times article, Meet the LIfe Hackers, (Oct. 16, 2006) some of the most prolific workers don't use complex technology to manage their days, but shove everything into one simple application. While some use a simple Word document as a brain dump, I daresay for most of us, that one application is our Outlook inbox and email folders. After all, as the article says, our inboxes are the one thing we're certain to look at all day long. And if we don't have an email reminder of a task, it may go by the wayside.
Perhaps that's why many of us use our inbox as a rough to-do list making the idea of an empty inbox a bit terrifying. But after reading Getting Things Done, a while back, I made the effort, creating folders for Actions, Waiting and Someday, as suggested. But I lapsed, backslided, whatever you want to call it. I'm afraid to remove things from my inbox, scared that once I put them there, I'll forget all about them. But after attending a session at the recent Joint Institute (SCALL, NOCALL, SANDALL) about the Getting Things Done philosophy, I'm trying again.
But the problem of putting a message into a folder and forgetting about it is a real one. So this time I've made some changes. I've created folders for current projects and tasks within my inbox. When I tried this before, I had one "Actions" folder. This time I'm creating subfolders to collect like tasks together, to be dealt with all at once when I have time. Any MCLE database updates go in one folder, Link Library edits/adds in another one. In order to to quickly determine, at a glance, how much is to be done in any of these areas, I've marked the emails as unread before moving them to these folders. As a result, the folder will be bolded, with a message count showing the number of unread emails that need to be addressed. This is working much better for me than one big "Actions" folder.
If you keep all your archives in your inbox, note that you can push the current actions folders to the top by simply putting an asterick in front of the name. I use this same technique in my pending projects folder to push the projects I'm actively working on to the top.
Here's proof that at one moment in time, I did, in fact, have an empty inbox:
I'll admit, though, it's not always that way, and it's not easy to keep my inbox clear. I blame Microsoft, as I do for so many ills of modern life. A simple change in Outlook would make moving important items to folders more do-able. You can set an alert on an email in your inbox, but alerts set on emails in folders, don't work. Why, oh why? It's critical to have a tickler on items in folders, which are not always in open view.
If you have any tips on how you manage your email, please share! I'm going to continue to try to fine tune and I'll let you know how things go. Managing email has become synonymous with managing our lives, and it simply must be mastered!!
Comments
One thing needs to be checked is that the date of the item is correct. It gets really confusing to put a past date on a future item as well as vice versa e.g.,
"According to the New York Times article, Meet the LIfe Hackers, (Oct. 16, 2006)"
:-)
BTW, I use Eudora. One of its features is the ability to change the SUBJECT of a received email. The subjects that I choose for managing tasks are based on time:
yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm [text/function/commentary]
Since my to-do folder is sorted by date, this is very handy. Annual reminders can easily be updated by overtyping the Subject:
/Pete
Posted by: Pete W at June 5, 2006 03:29 AM
Cindy:
You might want to take a look at "Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook" by Michael Linenberger. His book shows how to make changes to Outlook to do many of the things that you have described.
Hope this helps.
Dave Rakowski
Allentown, PA
Posted by: Dave Rakowski at June 5, 2006 11:01 AM
Cindy,
You mentioned archiving messages in Outlook. You might want to find out if you can archive your emails in your firm's document management system.
Our document management system allows you to archive almost any type of file, including emails. I can recreate the same folder structure I have in Outlook in the document management system. I also have the ability to make the folders private. So people in the firm will not see my email messages when they run searches for documents.
In addition, I was able to share certain folders with other people in the library who might need access to some of those emails if I'm not around.
Posted by: Jason Eiseman at June 8, 2006 08:54 AM
Cindy,
Your post has spawned a discussion over at Slaw: http://www.slaw.ca/2006/06/06/empty-inbox/.
One thing I found helpful for some folders I am working with is to change the folder settings from showing number of unopened messages (in blue with round parentheses) to total number of messages in the folder (in green with square brackets). To do that, right-click on a folder, click on properties (at the bottom) and it should be a choice under "General". That gives me a better idea of outstanding work.
Cheers,
Connie
Posted by: Connie Crosby at June 9, 2006 06:46 AM
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