It’s important to zero-out both your Inbox as well as your Email. How to process Email to zero? Watch me do this:
Question: Do you manage to process email to zero? Do you have zillions of email folders? How do you manage the overwhelming amount of email messages you receive?
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#1 by Mick on August 10th, 2009
Michael,
First of all, great videos! I’ve be catching up on them following an introduction from Michael Bungay Stanier. I’m looking forwards to reading the first three copies of Productive magazine.
I just wanted to say I thought the tips were really good in all of the movies I saw so far. Particularly liked the physical inbox for the trip to San Francisco – good idea.
The production quality of the videos is getting much better, the best quality was “processing emails to zero”
Keep it up!
#2 by Bernard on August 11th, 2009
Hi Michael,
I just found this website of yours and I really like it. I like the enthausiasm with which you tell us about GTD.
Now on this topic. My email routine is as follows:
1. I check my inbox.
2. I flag mails red when I have to Act Quickly, and Yellow when it can wait a bit.
3. When I send an email which I want to follow the reply I flag it Blue
4. When I have an email send to me on which I want to follow other peoples action I flag it Green.
(the flag colors are chosen so they are in order of importance for me)
5. I Move the emails to different folders for different project so I can process them when I’m working on that project. (One thing at a time)
6. When I don’t have to follow or reply to an email I put it in My Archive.
What I also use when I have a very full email box (e.g. after an holliday) is Confersation. The emails are then grouped and you can only read the last mail in the thread to know what your next action is on the email confersation.
Keep on making these cool vids and I keep watching them.
Greetings,
Bernard
#3 by Michael Sliwinski on September 2nd, 2009
Guys, thanks for great comments! Sorry for my late reply
I’ll keep on experimenting with the videos and their quality to make sure they are better and better. Check my last one on “Productive Office” which I recorded on the rooftops of my friend’s office
#4 by Abhijit Shirsath on November 11th, 2009
Amazing videos, liked it !
#5 by Ben Kopf on January 3rd, 2010
Hi Michael,
First. thanks for doing these video vignettes, they are not only informative but act as a timely reminder for those falling off the GTD wagon from time to time. Second I have started testing “focusing” applications on my Mac (Concentrate, Isolater, etc.) as well as timer apps to track my client work in GUI design and wondered if integrating a 2 minute timer in Nozbe is something you had planned. Silly as it seems sometimes, I have to constantly be reminded to focus, focus, focus, and email processing is a perfect example. It is REAL easy to “link-drift” or get carried away by the hyperlink undertow of MacWorld, iPhone Life, trade newsletters, and the like. Seems that email would be an ideal place to gently assist the GTD’er so they don’t stray until the point they feel comfortably in charge of the workflow. Any thoughts anyone? (As a side, most of the timers seem annoying when built into apps so I was trying to think of various ways to make them more useful; dimming the other applications on process focus works pretty well for me.)
Thanks,
Ben
#6 by Michael Sliwinski on January 13th, 2010
Ben, thanks for the heads up and for your comments.
Same here I guess – focus, focus, focus… we get distracted so many times during the day that it pains me to admit it, but it shouldn’t be like this.
Sometimes I curse the ability of my laptop to multitask… because it makes me switch windows so often.
My Email setup hasn’t changed a bit, still using only these three folders and processing everything to zero… and so far so good.
Happy 2010!