My Non-Inbox Zero System

Minnesota lawyer Steven Bolton posted a good question on the MSBA Solo/Small Firm Website:

I probably belong to too many listservs because I get a huge amount of email each day.  The ABS listservs have some good info, but much isn't work looking at.  Any ideas how to cope with two hundred emails a day?  Use Outlook 2007 and apply filters?  Something else?  Gmail?  I want to get to zero inbox.

Response:
I have had Merlin Mann speak for me at CLEs I have organized and I have read David Allen's "Getting Things Done."  I love their ideas and even on included Merlin's great "Inbox Zero" talk on SmallFirmSuccess.org.

As much as I admire the beauty and simplicity (and good common sense) of both of their approaches, I have to admit, falling not just short, but almost completely on the other end of the spectrum from "In Box Zero" in my own email management.  This is probably habit going back to the years before email clients were intelligent enough to do folders and the like.  It is, however, also because though my system is not the sleek modern thing, it has been working for me for a lot of years.

I go through the following steps:

1. Keep up on email daily - even when traveling.  Falling behind is a great way to quickly feel overwhelmed and frustrated.
2. I have filters set up for several lists that generate a lot of email into individual folders.  I don't want to be distracted by them on a email by email basis - I want to review them all at once which is much more efficient for me.
3. Immediately delete anything that is pure outright junk (particularly those Nigerian scam emails....) or that I know I won't be anything interesting like the buy.com email newsletter if I am not looking to buy consumer electronics that day.  I should also say here, I have really good spam filters - I hardly get any spam at all and that helps a lot.  It is well worth paying for an ISP that filters at the ISP level with a good spam filter like Postini.
4. If the email can be responded to quickly (2 min or less) I do so.
5. If the email demands a longer response but immediate attention (rare) I put aside other things and answer it immediately.
6. If the email demands future action, I drag it to my "Tasks" and Outlook turns the email into a task which I appropriately date for attention and completion.
7. I don't (and here I differ from Merlin greatly) delete or file the remaining emails - I simply keep them in my Inbox (I know that's so old school).  I relying on Archive to clean the Inbox out and create a running record of correspondence in the Archive folder (I set Archive to archive everything after two weeks).
8. If I need anything later, I find it with the Search function in Outlook or, increasingly, I am using Google Desktop Search since it uses an indexed system and the search is very quick.

My system is not the most efficient and violates about five laws of the GTD world.  It has the beauty of having worked really well for me for twenty plus years.  So though I've been reading David Allen and Merlin Mann on GTD and really like the ideas, I have to admit I have not been quick to implement them in my own life.  But that is an old old story!

- Peter H. Berge
 

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