Keeping your inbox empty (by yag)

Published 05 March 04 12:09 AM

Scoble asks “how do you deal with a huge amount of mail”? Like him, I took David Allen's course at Microsoft around 18 months ago. It spread like wildfire around the VB team (I was a Lead PM there at the time) and Chris Dias (I think it was Chris) arranged for a session for all of the PMs and anyone else who wanted to attend.

Robert - just wanted to tell you to stick with it. 18 months later, and my inbox is still pretty much empty every night (some all day meeting days get to wait a bit <g>). I've also found it helps me get thru my blogroll - I'd love to hear how it does on one the size of yours...

One other tip - if you have a smartphone and use the tasks as they suggest - run, don't walk, and get Developer One's Power Tasks - I now have all my tasks by category on my phone. And I can quickly dial the numbers in my “Calls” list.

by vsdata
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# Marc Orchant said on March 5, 2004 6:34 AM:
You're spot on. Moving the GTD workflow to whatever handheld device you rely on is a big part of "getting in to empty". I use a Sony Clie (Palm OS w/WiFi) and KeySuite (an Outlook work-alike) to keep my GTD workflow with me and in sync to my desktop.

Keep encouraging Robert. ANyone scanning as much data as he does needs to have a "mind like water".
# VS DATA Team's WebLog said on March 12, 2004 1:19 AM:
# Jeremy C. Wright said on March 17, 2004 8:15 PM:
At my old job as Director of IT I used to get 2000-3000 emails a day (valid, internal emails). It was generally my goal to keep my email down to 1 screen (about 15 messages), as I used my inbox much like an active To Do List.

Occasionally it'd get as high as 50 messages at the end of a day, and even less occasionally it'd be empty.

I still play this as part of my normal Time Management stuff. Works wonders for me.

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