I only keep two primary e-mail accounts, my personal and my work, but between them I was having to trawl through a mountain of e-mail, twice, daily. My inbox was overflowing with all kinds of e-mails, stuff I was going to do sometime but forgot.. it was taking me ages to find what I was looking for… then along came GTD. 

GTD (getting things done) is methodology for organising your life, tasks and e-mail in to manageable work chunks and prioritising accordingly. It has a defined labelling system and associated heirarchy. Whilst this might of been great if I’d adopted this in the beginning, it’s quite hard to retrofit an organisation system, just like trying to retrofit air conditioning or heating in your house, it creates a lot of mess and everyone gets annoyed. 

So I chose to simply become ruthless… if it had no immediate use it was trashed, not archived, trashed. E-mails that contained important information (defined as billing, accounting) was archived. That was it, no stupid chain e-mails, pictures of cats…. all gone. 

Now my inbox (both at home and work) is a crystal clear workspace, the only e-mails that are stored are ones that I’m currently actioning, and even then I don’t store whole conversations… what’s the point when it’s already tagged on to the bottom of the e-mail.

My workflow and productivity has improved and I’ve found I can actually find information faster because any information I do have I’ve had to think about and file away.

Perhaps it’s time you gave your inboxes a little spring clean! 

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