After one of those weeks where emergency after emergency cropped up between meetings I let my inbox get out of hand and left emails sitting in them as todo items. I’ve been a GTD follower for about 5 years now and I start to really feel out of control when my inbox is piling up. I know I’m re-reading the same email for the third time, but I fall into a hypnotic state.
Yesterday, I made a point after getting in early to really drill my inbox down move actions onto my lists. 171 emails later I had cleared everything dating back to 3 weeks ago. Freed of the mental distress of an overloaded inbox I’ve gotten more strategic items done in the last two days then I did all of last week. On top of that I’ve pushed along a wealth of issues that had been idling for weeks.
And the best part is I’m back to quick email sweeps 3 times a day to keep my inbox clean. If you’re one of those people who live in a 10,000+ inbox you might want to go back and read Merlin Mann’s articles on Inbox Zero.