It's really weird to see Google tell me "No new mail!", since I don't remember seeing that message in a long time. But it makes it a lot easier to remind myself to actually deal with email rather than leaving it in my mailbox, since it's much more manageable to deal with 1-5 messages than to look at a huge big inbox. It also makes email checking a less rewarding distraction, since when I get no new mail (it happens sometimes!), I see an empty inbox, rather than 1100 messages that I could be doing something about. I've done this once before, though, and it devolved back to a full inbox, so I'll report back in a couple of weeks how it's going this time.
It's really weird to see Google tell me "No new mail!", since I don't remember seeing that message in a long time. But it makes it a lot easier to remind myself to actually deal with email rather than leaving it in my mailbox, since it's much more manageable to deal with 1-5 messages than to look at a huge big inbox. It also makes email checking a less rewarding distraction, since when I get no new mail (it happens sometimes!), I see an empty inbox, rather than 1100 messages that I could be doing something about. I've done this once before, though, and it devolved back to a full inbox, so I'll report back in a couple of weeks how it's going this time.
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And oh my GOD that is an adorable new icon! :0)
(Bonus points for fitting ':(){ :|:&};:' in somehow.)
514-279-5671
love and love and love.
-f
More power to you for actually remedying the situation!
So, instead of messages piling up in my inbox, they'll pile up (albeit with some reduction of things that will never be responded to) in a "pending" folder. I'm not convinced this is an improvement; it just means information I might want or need could be in two places instead of one.
Perhaps (quite possibly) I am missing the gist of his suggestions or have missed the actual "how-to" page. ?
I think the key part of the strategy is having the mindset of deciding how and whether you should deal with some item the first time you see it and training yourself to use the "maybe later" word as rarely as possible. That's taken straight from the GTD methodology and after a few years of knowing about it, I'm still having trouble adjusting to it, but I still have faith in it.
PS. If you use Inbox Zero, information you might want or need won't be in two places; the Inbox will only ever contain items you've never read.
From http://web.mit.edu/arc/learning/mod
"When you sort through your mail, do you tend to look at everything once, and then leave it all in a pile, perhaps opening one or two things of interest? Then when you need to pay bills, you have to look at everything a second time in order to pull out your statements. Later, you may go through the same pile a third time to find a program flyer or the one credit card offer in which you might be interested? What a hassle! Only handle things once. When you sort your mail, sort it into bills, items to file/keep, items to pursue (put them on your to-do list) and recycling. You can likewise triage your email and telephone messages."
I think one problem for me is that if I move things out of my inbox, I'm unlikely to see them again unless I specifically go looking for them. For some things, that's OK, but for other things, I really need the occasional memory trigger to remind me of what I'm supposed to be working on and what the upcoming deadlines are.
I can certainly use the tips for some messages, though, to try to keep accrual of new and unimportant messages at a minimum.