Inbox to Zero

One of the first steps to GTD is to get control of your 'InBoxes'. My most overlooked inbox was my email at work with literally thousands of messages left hanging around in the main inbox area. Today I took the inbox down to zero using these tips... and it WORKED!

No I didn't read every single message and reply to everything that needed action. But I did basically scan each subject line and/or from field and made a quick executive decision to either categorize each one (or groups of them actually) into some sub folders or use my new best friend the DELETE key. The structure I chose for filing included folders called !Archive, !CreateProjects, !Respond and a future reference called !NeedtoRead (not that I plan on really reading each one, I plan on sorting them by date and deleting anything older than 90 days or so) but that gets them all in one area to sort/delete.

It does feel MUCH better knowing there aren't critical emails lurking in the midst of the thousands of other junk messages. I did indeed find serveral "I should have already (done that, replied to that, fixed that, etc) messages that I can now get into my master project list and tag a next action for.

Now I only have my personal email, physical inbox, and home mail to catch up on.. yikes!

GTD?

I'm sure most of you have heard of GTD.. or Getting Things Done.

Although I had heard of it, I hadn't really understood much about the concept until a couple weeks ago and oddly enough the timing of the knowledge is interesting. After having fought battle after battle managing 200 to 300 outstanding projects/tasks, an over flowing paper inbox and thousands of messages in my email inboxes I was feeling totally overwhelmed. Several critical items have fallen through the cracks and were turning into 'issues' for the Information Technology department that I run.

Not exactly sure where to turn I was ready to throw everything out and start over but after reading the first chapter or two of the book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity I believe there is hope afterall. Weird how the intro and first of the book pretty much explained my current feelings about work and life in general.

I'm still reading but am trying to at least apply the first area about

The book is good but the online additions and explaination and Hacks are even better... lots of good info and tips all around.

Will following the GTD concepts fix the world for me? Doubtful but I really think it will be a great help. Tune back in later and let's find out.
-Stephen