Inbox Zero

Oy, has it ever been a long time since I've updated this blog....Well, I'm not going to make any promises about do it more frequently.  Instead, I'll simply post something that has been amazing in my work life lately.

I am probably severely late to this party, but the InboxZero concept described by Merlin Mann in this video has had a profound effect on how I manage e-mail.

Personally, I have been able to clean out 10+ years of crap from my personal Gmail account in about 2 weeks.  I am about 50% done going through all of the crap I've kept in my work e-mail in the same 2 weeks.

The good news is that, this was not hard to implement once I got past the "I may need this in the future" FUD that my brain was giving me.  I now have e-mail that is easy to deal with and have certain places where I can keep things.

2 products have been instrumental to getting me here:

1. Boomerang for GMail - This helps to remember to follow-up on things in a timely fashion.  I use it for anything that I need to defer.  In addition, I also use it to flag e-mails where I ask someone to do something, so I can ensure to follow-up in a timely manner.
2. Pocket - I subscribe to a few mailing lists, so my e-mails (both work and personal) get cluttered up with things I want to read eventually.  Instead of leaving them in my e-mail where there is little chance I can follow-up on them, I save the important ones to pocket and let the rest of them go.  I then use one of my 30 minutes sessions on the bus to catch up on my saved pocket articles.  And use InboxZero principles to manage my pocket queue.

Hope this is helpful for others!