Sometimes I want to scream.
I’ve been interested in the whole GTD methodology and have tried to undertake it in some parts in my own life. The main one is email at work. (I should point out I have to use Outlook being WinXP)
At my old job, my inbox just seemed to be a general dumping ground for anything that didn’t have a large category to be filed into.
Once I read and heard about applying the GTD structure to email I thought I’d try it. So I took an hour or two to set up the folders and get to work. I’ve adopted a few strategies. I have the standard folders, @Action, @Hold, @Archive, @Waiting For and @Respond. These stand as my main working folders, specifically @Action. When emails hit my inbox, I read them, and if they require me to do something, I move them to @Action. Anything that is sent to a a mailing list that I’m on, goes to a @Circulars folder for later reading (this is rarely dire information). My @Archive folder is a general archive folder, and @Hold is vital information to keep on hand. In my Inbox, I also apply some categories to help me sort stuff. Anything that I’m cc’d to gets tagged with FYI (the theory being that people should use cc properly, as for info only, not for action). In the Inbox, I then group by categories, so I can easily hide all those I’ve been cc’d in on for ignoring. That leaves the rest.
As I said @Action is usually a full folder. Its all the emails that require me to do something, or will remind me I have to do something. Once its done, I move it.
I work for a number of sales consultants who have various schemes and IFA’s. Since I don’t like the Outlook search (its too cumbersome and slow) I sort by folders (how un-gmail of me. I shudder) so each consultant has a folder, and each IFA has one, and then the big clients I look after have one too. So when an email is finished, it goes in the client folder.
Thats the bit I hate. If I was using Mail.app I would just bundle all consultant emails in one folder and tag them, then create smart folders to read these tags.
Anyway, the point of this is that most other people don’t work in this sensible way. The way I see a lot of people work is dreadful. The inbox is a (gmail style) dumping ground, only without the tools of Gmail. If an email comes in, its read, and if it needs some action, is often remarked as unread. So your entire system works on remembering those unread emails. So when you have time to do your work, your whole system is to scroll through your mails, read and unread, and pick out those unread ones to work on. So you’ve got lots of emails to work on, and lots around them to deal with mentally. As read somewhere, Outlook is designed to be useful using a hierarchical system. It drives me mad because I see it as so ineffective.
So thats what I hate. When you start working, noone tells you how to deal with email. They tell you how to use the basic functions of an email client, but not good ways to deal with it all. So I would like to educate those people, and others.
There is a better way. And even if you don’t have the tools of Gmail, or Mail.app or MailTags, or Thunderbird, you can find ways to deal with work email better.
If you would like more info, check out the Inbox Zero section on 43Folders, Merlin Mann’s Google TechTalk (very interesting, especially good for presentation style – learn tips!), and some posts by John Gruber [1]
Also, read these good articles
How to use a single Mail.app Archive (without losing your mind)
Inbox Zero: Processing to zero
Companies Limit Email Use to Boost Productivity
