Bonus Post: managing e-mail inboxes
Mar. 5th, 2009 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjA year or so ago at work I took this time-management workshop (which was mostly a shill for Franklin-Covey merchandise) that really helped me get a handle on keeping track of tasks and "to do"s on the job. One of the guiding principles was to keep your in box empty. Pretty much everything is in one of four categories: delete unread (meaningless reminders and notices), skim and delete (e.g., the daily "site news"), skim and archive (anything needed for reference, but not for action), and convert to a to-do item (which is extremely convenient to do in Lotus Notes). One of the underlying principles behind the last group is to have a scheduled time to deal with to-dos rather than going off in all directions at once trying to respond to them as they arrive, or having them pile up unorganized in the in-box.
At work, I've been keeping on top of this system fairly well. At home, not so much. My system for dealing with Category 4 e-mail tends to be to have a folder labelled something like "deal with this" or "action items from in-box" or "to reply later". Well, guess what. I have a folder labelled "need to do something about this" containing 86 pending e-mails from July 2006 to October 2008. I have a folder labelled "sort through this and do something" with 91 e-mails from May 2007 to March 2008. And as a result of how I'm coordinating reading e-mail on both the laptop and iPhone (which forces me to physically remove all e-mail from the in-box after reading -- or I keep re-receiving it every time I download mail) I have a a folder entitled "pending items from in-box" with 55 e-mails from November 2008 to the present.
What all of this really means is that my good intentions for answering questions, doing research for people, following up on links, or even simply continuing conversations far and away outstrip my actual time and energy for doing so. Typically, about once a year I try to go through these types of folders and delete or archive items that are either so out-dated that they're obsolete, or where temporal distance lets me conclude that I never will get to them. But in the mean time I drag the guilt around like Marley's chains.
At work, I've been keeping on top of this system fairly well. At home, not so much. My system for dealing with Category 4 e-mail tends to be to have a folder labelled something like "deal with this" or "action items from in-box" or "to reply later". Well, guess what. I have a folder labelled "need to do something about this" containing 86 pending e-mails from July 2006 to October 2008. I have a folder labelled "sort through this and do something" with 91 e-mails from May 2007 to March 2008. And as a result of how I'm coordinating reading e-mail on both the laptop and iPhone (which forces me to physically remove all e-mail from the in-box after reading -- or I keep re-receiving it every time I download mail) I have a a folder entitled "pending items from in-box" with 55 e-mails from November 2008 to the present.
What all of this really means is that my good intentions for answering questions, doing research for people, following up on links, or even simply continuing conversations far and away outstrip my actual time and energy for doing so. Typically, about once a year I try to go through these types of folders and delete or archive items that are either so out-dated that they're obsolete, or where temporal distance lets me conclude that I never will get to them. But in the mean time I drag the guilt around like Marley's chains.
