(no subject)
Mar. 22nd, 2011 08:03 amPost
Today, for the first time in years, probably ever, I took some incoming post, and immediately threw away the junk, put the things that needed to be dealt with on my desk, and anything that I wanted to keep in my big file.
I'm not sure I've ever done that. What made the difference was a filing system where everything was VERY CLEARLY LABELLED so clearly even dozy early morning Jack could see at a glance what should go where, so you can just drop something right there. The reason post had always accumulated in a pile before is that it was a pain to sort through the file looking for the right place.
Email
I think the most important thing for email is to distinguish between "mail I need to deal with somehow" and "everything else".
I find it useful to subdivide those further into "mail that's just arrived", "mail I need to reply to now, or to do some other action", "mail I'm waiting for a response from", "mail that I might conceivably need one day, maybe" and "trash"
Honestly, if you have a way of clearly marking those, it's no more work to do that than to just leave everything in the same folder it comes in.
(It's always worth filtering incoming mail if you can, eg. LJ notifications go in a notifications folder, not the inbox, so I'm talking about actual mail. OTOH, I think there's very little point trying to sort old mail into folders or anything. It's a lot of work and if you have a decent search doesn't really help. If you want to find something again, just make sure it has some keywords you can search for.)
For me, I use:
- mail that's just arrived in the inbox
- mail I need to do something about in nextactions
- mail I need to wait for a response in waitingfor
- mail I might conceivably need one day not in any folder
- trash deleted
I honestly find it really, really helpful that nextactions is _all_ things I can do, because (even if it's got a bit out of control) I can scan down and always deal with everything in it _somehow_ (even if that's "saying I don't have time and removing it" or "saying this can't be handled until I get a response, move to waitingfor"). That makes it so much easier psychologically to DO something. If emails you have to do something about are mixed in with other stuff, then as you scan, you'll keep getting spurious reminders like "oh yeah, I should do something about X, but I can't yet" and never settle on something you CAN do.
Of course, other people sort these in different ways, for instance, having the first three items all in the inbox, but new items marked "unread", action items marked "starred" and waitingfor marked neither. Or, new items marked "new", action items marked "unread" and waitingfor marked neither.
Lots of people are doing something similar to this already (often something better). But many people don't, and have "email I need to deal with", "every email I ever received", and "new email" all muddled up together.
I honestly think, as a lifelong procrastinator and disorganiser, even if you don't have any time, and whether you have little or lots of important mail, dividing mail like this is strictly better. It doesn't take any set up time -- just create the folders, put all the stuff in your inbox older than a month that you're not specifically dealing with in a folder called "archive_2011" and sort it if you ever have time[1], and then as you have time sort everything else in your inbox into "nextactions", "waitingfor", archive or delete.
This is an adaption of Dave Allen's suggestions, that I found about the right level for email. Obviously some people will need something more sophisticated (in fact, I have two nextaction folders, one for boring tasks, one for organising social stuff), some have so little email in one category it's not worth it.
I found the major impediments to implementing this were:
* Resisting the urge to leave "important" things in the inbox. If the important things go in "nextactions", as does anything you'll reply to but not till this afternoon, you'll check "nextactons" every day and your inbox will be empty. If you leave things to "incubate" in the inbox, you'll never look in nextactions and important stuff will be lost
* Being realistic about what you probably won't deal with and archiving/deleting it now
On the other hand, it works quite well if you let everything go for a month because you're busy/away: you can immediately sort stuff then, much easier than if you didn't have somewhere to put it
[1] Hint: you'll never bother. But you'd never bother ANYWAY, so it's better to have it clearly marked, because that way, if you DO bother, it's right there, and if you don't, it's not cluttering up your inbox. If you don't do this, you're gambling that the mess in your inbox will get you to sort through all the old stuff, and if it hasn't worked for the last 5 years, what makes you think it's a good bet now? :)
Today, for the first time in years, probably ever, I took some incoming post, and immediately threw away the junk, put the things that needed to be dealt with on my desk, and anything that I wanted to keep in my big file.
I'm not sure I've ever done that. What made the difference was a filing system where everything was VERY CLEARLY LABELLED so clearly even dozy early morning Jack could see at a glance what should go where, so you can just drop something right there. The reason post had always accumulated in a pile before is that it was a pain to sort through the file looking for the right place.
I think the most important thing for email is to distinguish between "mail I need to deal with somehow" and "everything else".
I find it useful to subdivide those further into "mail that's just arrived", "mail I need to reply to now, or to do some other action", "mail I'm waiting for a response from", "mail that I might conceivably need one day, maybe" and "trash"
Honestly, if you have a way of clearly marking those, it's no more work to do that than to just leave everything in the same folder it comes in.
(It's always worth filtering incoming mail if you can, eg. LJ notifications go in a notifications folder, not the inbox, so I'm talking about actual mail. OTOH, I think there's very little point trying to sort old mail into folders or anything. It's a lot of work and if you have a decent search doesn't really help. If you want to find something again, just make sure it has some keywords you can search for.)
For me, I use:
- mail that's just arrived in the inbox
- mail I need to do something about in nextactions
- mail I need to wait for a response in waitingfor
- mail I might conceivably need one day not in any folder
- trash deleted
I honestly find it really, really helpful that nextactions is _all_ things I can do, because (even if it's got a bit out of control) I can scan down and always deal with everything in it _somehow_ (even if that's "saying I don't have time and removing it" or "saying this can't be handled until I get a response, move to waitingfor"). That makes it so much easier psychologically to DO something. If emails you have to do something about are mixed in with other stuff, then as you scan, you'll keep getting spurious reminders like "oh yeah, I should do something about X, but I can't yet" and never settle on something you CAN do.
Of course, other people sort these in different ways, for instance, having the first three items all in the inbox, but new items marked "unread", action items marked "starred" and waitingfor marked neither. Or, new items marked "new", action items marked "unread" and waitingfor marked neither.
Lots of people are doing something similar to this already (often something better). But many people don't, and have "email I need to deal with", "every email I ever received", and "new email" all muddled up together.
I honestly think, as a lifelong procrastinator and disorganiser, even if you don't have any time, and whether you have little or lots of important mail, dividing mail like this is strictly better. It doesn't take any set up time -- just create the folders, put all the stuff in your inbox older than a month that you're not specifically dealing with in a folder called "archive_2011" and sort it if you ever have time[1], and then as you have time sort everything else in your inbox into "nextactions", "waitingfor", archive or delete.
This is an adaption of Dave Allen's suggestions, that I found about the right level for email. Obviously some people will need something more sophisticated (in fact, I have two nextaction folders, one for boring tasks, one for organising social stuff), some have so little email in one category it's not worth it.
I found the major impediments to implementing this were:
* Resisting the urge to leave "important" things in the inbox. If the important things go in "nextactions", as does anything you'll reply to but not till this afternoon, you'll check "nextactons" every day and your inbox will be empty. If you leave things to "incubate" in the inbox, you'll never look in nextactions and important stuff will be lost
* Being realistic about what you probably won't deal with and archiving/deleting it now
On the other hand, it works quite well if you let everything go for a month because you're busy/away: you can immediately sort stuff then, much easier than if you didn't have somewhere to put it
[1] Hint: you'll never bother. But you'd never bother ANYWAY, so it's better to have it clearly marked, because that way, if you DO bother, it's right there, and if you don't, it's not cluttering up your inbox. If you don't do this, you're gambling that the mess in your inbox will get you to sort through all the old stuff, and if it hasn't worked for the last 5 years, what makes you think it's a good bet now? :)