Project Inbox Zero
Managing your email can be a pain. Recently I stumbled over Remo’s remark mentioning that he got his mails done in 2007.
This reminded me of the GTD book that I had read a few years ago, but never implemented, since changing a system needs time. Managing at least e-mail after the GT principle seems reasonable, though. So I asked Remo for his actual implementation, which he posted swiftly on his blog. Thanks Remo.
Since I use Apple Mail and I wanted a sligthly adapted version, I browsed the web and found a wealth of info, the best maybe this video of a Google Tech Talk, called Inbox Zero:
So, I started my own implementation. Inspired by both Remo’s version and the above Google talk, it consists of 4 folders:
According to the GTD principle and the video above, with each mail you decide what to do (Do it now and Archive, Delegate, Defer, oder Delete. Just two folders required, Archive and Deferred. I added two other folders, Receipts and Logins, which are here to collect these items. Other than that just a single Archive folder for everything else - search is good enough these days!!!
To make things more efficient, you need keyboard shortcuts to apply the GTD action to each mail. Since this option is not integrated with Apple Mail I used Mail Act-on. My rules look like this:
That’s it. I have tested it for a month now. And it works perfectly for me!