One new years resolution done!
February 21st, 2005 by gregr
I didn’t post about it…but one of my new years resolutions for this year was to clean out my email inbox. I believe at the beginning of the year, I had about 500 unread messages, and about 1500 total in that folder…I was using it as an every-growing to-do list. It hit critical mass a couple of weeks ago, with over 1000 unread.
Some friends told me to just archive the whole thing and start from scratch…but I just knew there were things in there I should respond to. So over the last week or so, I’ve been cutting it down to size. And today, on a holiday, I spent about half the day and got it all the way down to empty. Could I be more excited?
So if you’ve gotten a flurry of email today, regarding things you’ve long since forgotten about, now you know why! And here’s to hoping I can keep this better under control now. :-)
This entry was posted on Monday, February 21st, 2005 at 8:49 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 21st, 2005 at 9:06 pm
I highly recommend David Allen’s Getting Things Done as a solution to inbox overload. I implemented his system about 2 years ago and I rarely have more than 5-6 messages in my inbox. Usually it’s empty. The book is very popular and Allen has acheived an almost cultlike following.
Google “getting things done” to see what I mean.
February 21st, 2005 at 11:58 pm
And now, thanks to the miracles of blog email notification technology, I’ve just ruined your perfectly clean inbox. Muahahaha…
Congradulations, just did something similar at work: I enforced use of the task/bug tracker. I was drowning in emailed requests, now I can leave my inbox for internal corporate spam and actual conversations.
February 23rd, 2005 at 7:26 pm
How’d ya do it? GTD?
February 24th, 2005 at 3:57 pm
Greg:
I was happy to just see the scroll bar in my Outlook client disappear, which I achieved November 21, 2003.
http://myst-technology.com/mysmartchannels/public/item/16667
Did RSS play a role in making it possible for you (as it did for me)? ;-)
February 25th, 2005 at 12:22 am
Steve - no special technique, just brute force. :-)
March 11th, 2005 at 9:46 am
Hi Greg
I hope all’s well and you’re having fun with Daryl, Lane, Ed and Gordon.
Do you have a new years resolution to update your blog a bit more frequently? I enjoy reading your blog entries but you’ve really tailed off the frequency over the last 4 or 5 months.
Edd in London (the only place you’ve been outside the USA, right?)
March 27th, 2005 at 9:24 pm
Just a test - please ignore
March 27th, 2005 at 9:28 pm
One more test - sorry!