One of the most pivotal personal productivity habits I have developed is the practice of keeping my email inbox empty.

Now, I’m certainly not claiming to have invented this - scads of people both swear by this technique and try to preach it to their email-hording colleagues, most of whom usually find the idea ludicrous.

But for those of you either encountering the idea for the first time or still skeptical about it, let me impress upon you the psychological benefit of an empty inbox, and the resulting gains in both productivity and happiness.

Looking at an empty inbox is a bit like feeling the breeze blow through your open window on a spring day - aaaah, yes. There it is. It is an instant reminder that things are good, they are under control, and you are going to be fine.

Getting the inbox empty means putting the messages you need in logical places, and that instantly makes you more productive.

A great resource to begin exploring this concept is Merlin Mann’s “Inbox Zero” series. It can be an overwhelming amount of information at first, so here is my process, in just a few steps:

1. Look at your inbox. Look at each item in it, one at a time. If it is something you can do quickly, do it and delete it.
2. If it is not, decide what the next thing is that needs to be done on it. If you are working with others and can delegate, do so. If the next step requires your touch, drag it into an appropriate folder in your email client.
3. Intelligently design a sub-folder system that lets you partition things off neatly. I have one folder for each project I’m currently working on. Within each of those are a number of subfolders whose names are self-evident as to their purpose. So, if one project is an article I’m researching, its folder might contain subfolders called “People to call,” “Quotes,” “Photos” and “Research/articles.”
4. Use a web-based task manager or to-do list to schedule dates/times when you will go through the folders. I use Yahoo! Calendar. When I’m at the beginning stages of a project, I decide which chunks of work will be done on which day(s) - then assign those chunks in the calendar, as all-day events. I also use the calendar to manage the deadlines for each project. When the day begins, all I have to worry about is the tasks in my calendar for that day. I don’t have to worry about any of the other things in the wind.

That last part is crucial. I believe that a key to happiness and confidence is knowing that everything is under control, and not being in a perpetual state of freaked-out. I might have six projects going at any given time, but on any given day, all I have to do is parts X and Y of projects A and B. This allows the mind to calm down, and greatly increases quality of life. For me, at least.

(And yes, I know, my steps are more than a little similar to “Getting Things Done,” which I have read and enjoyed. But what you see here is my homebrew version of how to get it done, with fewer steps and moving parts.)

Posted on February 12th, 2008 by James
Filed under: Self, Work