Experimenting with Project Zero Inbox

Time is something that’s fixed, but seems to behave in a weird way, it either drags when we are bored or hammers along when we are having fun. What’s certain is that most of us don’t have as much time as we want.

So one my pet projects over the last year has been to try and follow systems like David Allen’s Getting Things Done. These systems take, you guessed it, time to learn, ironic that a system that saves time actually takes time…

Anyway even with these productivity systems and note collection systems I’ve adopted, I still have a weakness, email.

In my job I DON’T need to check email every 5 seconds, I DON’T need to have a sophisticated folder structure with incredible 3 layer rule setups and I DON’T need to run my projects from my inbox, so why do I still do then…..

My Confession

I manage my email poorly, ok there I’ve said it, I no longer run a program of work, I run an inbox. My inbox is rubbish.

In my defense I work in a very traditional office where people use email like a phone and like a chat system. So my email inbox is tragic.

Mis Management

I get maybe a hundred emails a day, some need action, some are for reference and some are just rubbish. When I went away for Christmas the amount of email in my inbox when I came back was madness.

So, what does one do with this many emails in the inbox? I seriously thought about deleting every email in my inbox and declaring email bankruptcy. I was minutes away from setting up an auto responder with the following:

“I’m declaring email bankruptcy and have cleared my inbox. I apologize if your email was important. Please call me on x should you wish to discuss an important matter”.

But I didn’t, I don’t think it would have been compatible with my current bosses.

So no auto responder, but I still deleted the emails anyway and started a secret experiment.

Now, you should know that my current job is in an environment where people have been working the same way for 20 years, some for 40 years and any change in the status quo would be seen as heresy. This is a “group” that is not open to “experimentation“. So I kept my little experiment a secret.

Here’s what I did. I deleted all the mail in my in box, yep all of it. I moved all my historical emails out of their beautiful folder structure and into a single folder called “General”. I then deleted every folder, which broke all the rules. (tear). I then created another folder called CC and set up a rule to put all emails i’m cc’d on into the CC folder. Finally I created another folder called “Action”.

So, thats Action, CC and General and that’s all.

Now, Here’s What Happened. NOTHING….

A few people sent me emails following up their older emails, and one even called. But in all honestly almost no one noticed I erased 6 weeks of email and no one cared, I didn’t even go looking for any. Sure, sure, I had to request a few things back, but who’s never done that before?

The Brave New World

I’m trying to design my new workflow to allow me to zero my inbox at the end of every day and it’s proving to be hard.  Nevertheless here’s the workflow.

An email comes in, at various times throughout the day (don’t have a routine just yet) I scan the email box, I ignore the CC folder, I move anything that requires something from me or for me to do something into the Actions folder, I delete any rubbish and file the rest goes into General. So far I’ve managed to keep my inbox at 0 since January

I know what you’re thinking; now the Actions folder is the new inbox. Only it’s not because it’s now a very focused task list, nothing should be in there unless I actually need to act on it. I review the actions every morning and process what I need to throughout the day.

Time Improvements

For me, it’s all about making effective use of your time to get work things done so you can free up time to work on your own projects.

My experiment is sort of working I’m not really such a slave to the inbox anymore and I have a very focused task list instead of cherry picking from the inbox.

So go on delete your inbox, its fun…..

Now, on this Facebook thing, this is another little experiment, if you liked this little brain fart please “like” this post in FB for me, because if you don’t you’ll make puppies cry!