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June 20, 2009
The Nuances of Inbox Zero
I had an "ah-ha" moment yesterday, I think. The GTD workflow diagram, walks through a few key questions. The very first one is "What is it?" Before you even get to asking if it's actionable (yes or no) and then what you're going to about it (delete/do/delegate/defer), you need to figure out what it even is. Sounds simple and obvious enough, but I think skipping over that one question is what has so many people fusterclupped (my technical term for being confused and stuck) about getting In to zero. They skip that step, leave the email in the Inbox assuming there's some kind of action, but in reality, they haven't even given themselves time to assess the nature of the input, much less decide what to do about it.
That "What is it?" question is the assessment before the decision. That's the time where I'm giving myself the time to actually give some careful thought and consideration to what I'm dealing with, such as:
- What is this email asking me to do?
- Is this even part of my job?
- Am I in the To: field or CC:?
People ask me all of the time how I get my Inboxes to zero every day (or nearly every day.) Here's what works for me:
- I give myself enough processing time
- I've gotten really fast at the "assessment" step
- I have a simple clear model to know what to do with something after I assess what it is
- I'm really clear about my current 20,000 areas of focus to know whether something is my job or not
- I'm really current with my projects & actions to know if I can/should say no or yes
I'm going to do a webinar this summer on GTD Connect showing real examples of this with my email. In the meantime, I hope this helps to bring light to some of the nuances with processing.
Posted by Kelly at June 20, 2009 09:44 AM
Comments
Great article. About how many emails do you get a day? Do you leave it up all day and process it all during the day, or do you have specific times that you check email?
Posted by: Ron Lane at June 20, 2009 03:38 PM
Kelly this is a great added step. I suffer a great deal from the problem of, "I think I need this, I need to do some thing, I think." Stopping and asking what is this, seems so simple, but is really gets you moving in the assessment process. Knowing what it is, will very much help me figure out what I have to do with it!
Thanks for your work getting me de-fusterclupped!
Posted by: Dean Graham at June 20, 2009 04:11 PM
Yes, "what is it" seems to be really the important point of inbox processing. A lot of people that I know have a really hard time to scan through an email and get the important points of to dos, questions or whatever. Really nice summary.
Posted by: Chris at June 21, 2009 01:54 AM
