My normal email routine has been (for about ten years):

• Keep it open all the time, letting my email client check for email once a minute and potentially make a little “ding” sound if my speakers are on.
• Check my email very often - sort of a constant micro task within any major task I am working on (even while I was programming)
• Treat email items in my inbox as a sort of to-do list.
• Once a month or so, go nuts and “clean it” down to about 20-30 items.
• Repeat.

This is obviously pretty distracting and disorganized, but somehow it’s always worked for me as a knowledge worker.

I’m always late to the party on stuff like this, but I’m giving Inbox Zero a shot based on all the hubbub from my Twitterverse. When I read about Inbox Zero, it really boiled down to just common sense. You convert every message in your inbox into an action. Those actions (for me) are (in order of preference):

• Delete/Archive
• Forward/Delegate
• Respond Now and Delete (I’m using a relaxed 3 sentences rule at the 95th percentile - it’s stupid to me to be so rigid as to never allow more when there’s merit to having more)
• Defer (goes in my to-do list, I’m using the GTD-influenced tool called “Ghost Action” for it’s utter simplicity - so far so good)
• Do it Now (just do the necessary thing, if it will take me just a few minutes)

Today was the first day I committed to trying this system, and I had 150 messages in my inbox. My inbox has alway acted as a near term to-do list for me. Of those 150 messages, I applied the first action (Delete/Archive) to about 60% of them - I was really surprised it was that many. After all, this had been my “to-do” list that was sitting in my inbox. Well, I had already done a bunch of them but hadn’t gotten to a “clean up/purge” event for my inbox yet so they were still sitting there, annoying me every minute of every day. I delegated a few things, and just took care of a few things, and created to-do items in Ghost Action for about 15 things. So, really, only 10% of what was in my inbox at the start of the process was really a to-do like I thought it was.

And now, my inbox gives me a really nice feeling when I look at it:

I also set my mail app to only check for email once an hour. There are really very few “fires” that have to be dealt with right now in my email. My goal here is to not be so distracted by email and consciously “process” it on a schedule rather than to just “check it” all the time to see what’s going on and react randomly to some of it but not all of it. This is really the key insight of Inbox Zero - again it’s just common sense.

I’ve tried “getting organized” in my email before, and have failed. This time I am using some best practices that I found and a key difference is the process vs check philosophy, so I feel like this time it can work.

My only real fear is that people will not perceive me to be as “fast” to respond on email. I have about 10 contacts that often write me for a very quick answer to something. I often respond in minutes, and I think they often count on that. I’ve taken pride in that. But when I think about that expectation, I think it’s bogus. Hopefully it won’t be a big deal.

I’ll blog more about my progress with it and let you know if it’s sticks for me or not. If you’re using this system, please let me know any key tips/insights that you’ve learned.

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