1 post tagged “gmail”
Okay, I admit it -- that after three years or so now on the "Getting Things Done" (or GTD) system of time management, the only aspect of my life that I still have serious problems with is my email, with messages that can sometimes easily (easily) sit in my inbox for six or nine months before I ever bother to get back to them. This is not acceptable! Especially with GTD working so well in all the other areas of my life; I can't reconcile these two things, in fact, of how well my system works for everything else but not my email.
Anyway, I recently read this article by Lifehacker.com's Gina Trapani, where she invents a new simple three-folder system for handling all her email; it got me to thinking about the ways I use email myself, which led to me inventing a three-label system for my own use. As you can see in the above screenshot, they consist of "respond," "moreaction" and "holdtemp" -- basically, if an email is going to be in my inbox from now on, it needs to have at least one of these labels, or else there's no reason for it to be there. Each time a new email comes in, then, the moment I'm done reading it, I'll end up making one of the following decisions:
--I'm done; throw it away
--It requires a short response; do it right that second
--It requires a long response; give it the "respond" label
--It requires another action on my part away from my email, before it can be thrown away; give it the "moreaction" label
--It requires information from someone else before it can be thrown away; give it the "holdtemp" label
--It can be archived; give it one of the usual archiving labels in my system
I'm hoping, then, that this will help me not only speed through the 22 emails still left in my inbox these days (some going all the way back to April of last year, I shit you not), but also to quickly turn around all new email that arrives in the future, and keep me in a situation where I'm keeping on top of my email as much as anything else in my life. That would be a real relief, to tell you the truth; that's one of the biggest sources of stress in my life these days, in fact, is the constant pressure of getting back to old emails in my inbox. Anyway, wish me luck.
Anyway, I recently read this article by Lifehacker.com's Gina Trapani, where she invents a new simple three-folder system for handling all her email; it got me to thinking about the ways I use email myself, which led to me inventing a three-label system for my own use. As you can see in the above screenshot, they consist of "respond," "moreaction" and "holdtemp" -- basically, if an email is going to be in my inbox from now on, it needs to have at least one of these labels, or else there's no reason for it to be there. Each time a new email comes in, then, the moment I'm done reading it, I'll end up making one of the following decisions:
--I'm done; throw it away
--It requires a short response; do it right that second
--It requires a long response; give it the "respond" label
--It requires another action on my part away from my email, before it can be thrown away; give it the "moreaction" label
--It requires information from someone else before it can be thrown away; give it the "holdtemp" label
--It can be archived; give it one of the usual archiving labels in my system
I'm hoping, then, that this will help me not only speed through the 22 emails still left in my inbox these days (some going all the way back to April of last year, I shit you not), but also to quickly turn around all new email that arrives in the future, and keep me in a situation where I'm keeping on top of my email as much as anything else in my life. That would be a real relief, to tell you the truth; that's one of the biggest sources of stress in my life these days, in fact, is the constant pressure of getting back to old emails in my inbox. Anyway, wish me luck.
