An epiphany re my inbox!

[taxgeek]

Thanks to the Roadmap seminar on 7/21 in SM (highly recommended, btw) and a conversation with Randy Stokes (fellow GTDer of this board), I had an epiphany about working from zero in my email/voicemail inbox that I just have to share! I'm so excited!

I was having problems keeping my inbox empty for a very simple reason. I was keeping emails as physical reminders of actions that needed to be taken, rather than putting those things on my lists.

When I got new emails, when I didn't have time to actually DO whatever I imagined might be required after reading them, I would just not open them. (ahem. embarrassed smiley here). This led to a few problems!

But, after the seminar on the 21st, I gave myself permission to open an email and process it by writing the NA on a list, without actually having to DO the next action right then. This has taken away (so far anyway) my resistence to opening emails.

Now when I process emails, I open them, shoot a quick reply ("I received your email, and will address it as soon as I can"), archive it in the appropriate folder and put a NA on my lists in the appropriate place.

Hurraaaaaaayyyy! Thanks David and Randy. ;-)

It was worth the money and the time in the seminar for just that one epiphany.

[spectecGTD]

I had the same problem prior to GTD. I would either not open emails or else open them and leave them in inbox limbo until I could (hopefully) get back to them. My inbox looked like a jumbled mess of undone and undoable junk. Like you, I experienced a few embarrasing moments over this bad habit.

After absorbing David's emphasis on "working from zero base" I stopped that practice and count it among the top five or six major changes brought about by GTD. Now an unopened email just screams at me to "DO SOMETHING WITH ME!".

I also have folders marked 'Review Weekly" and "Review Monthly", and it's amazing how many of those emails go straight to those two folders as soon as I read them (and acknowledge if necessary). They then sit patiently waiting for me to come back to them at the appropriate time since I made a good N/A choice (Defer) as soon as they arrived.

[jkgrossi]

I think that on the GTD Fast CD's David addresses this and recommends that unless you are away from your computer most of the time, you should skip writing the NA on your list... rather, just throw the email into an @Action folder. If you are @computer pretty ubiquitously, it's extra work to write the NA down.

Does he still recommend the same practice?

[ericlechner]

... rather, just throw the email into an @Action folder. If you are @computer pretty ubiquitously, it's extra work to write the NA down.

The artifact (an email) isn't a next action, though. It's probably got one that goes with it, but the email itself usually doesn't tell you what you need to do with it. If you just toss the emails that require responses into your @Action folder, each time you look at one of them, you have to figure out what the next action is for each email.

It seems like you want a way to transmogrify the emails into next actions, so you can keep track of what you need to do with the emails in addition to the emails themselves. (The GTD outlook plugin tries to do something like this, but I found it awkward.)

[taxgeek]

I agree with Eric. And I did try the @actions folder - it got seriously ignored, just like my inbox did. I prefer to spend the extra time, for items longer than 2 minutes, to type it onto a list. I'm a fast typer. ;-) Unless it's an item less than 2 minutes, you're going to have to put something on a list sometime, or else you're just using an electronic placeholder, which you'll have to process and put on a list at the weekly review. Maybe it works for some people, just not for me.

With Outlook, you can just drag the email over to your tasks icon, and it will open a new task with the email text in the body of it. This is very fast and easy, and sometimes the appropriate way to handle the email, rather than starting it as a new task. Sometimes not though, it depends.

Our voicemails show up as little emails from "Call Express", with litte tape machine type buttons (play, stop, etc.) I just open the email/vmail, set it playing, hit ctrl-shift K to open a new task on top, and type while the email plays. Works great so far.

[andersons]

I think that on the GTD Fast CD's David addresses this and recommends that unless you are away from your computer most of the time, you should skip writing the NA on your list... rather, just throw the email into an @Action folder. If you are @computer pretty ubiquitously, it's extra work to write the NA down.

Does he still recommend the same practice?

Are you sure? I don't have the Fast CDs, but I thought there used to be advice on handling email in the Tips & Tools section. In any case, that's not how I understood the advice on handling email.

It is always extra work to write down any NA. But if you don't, you will not have them all in one trusted system, right?

If it's OK to skip writing down actions that come from emails on my list, then can I also skip writing down actions that come from paper mail, and just put the mail itself in an "Action" pile? That seems like the old strategy I had before reading GTD that let's just say did not work well for me.

I understood the @Actions email folder to be an action support folder. The action is written down on NA lists. If the email is needed when you decide to do the action, you can find it easily because it's in its action support email folder.

So the Inbox would contain only emails I have not yet processed into my one trusted system. @Action contains emails I need to refer to when I do the action I recorded in my system. Other email reference folders contain email that I may or may not refer to in the distant future, emails not associated with any of my NAs.

At least this is how I understood the recommendations I read on handling email. They made a lot of sense to me and kicked my butt into processing over 6,000 emails (or was it 8,000) that were in my Inbox.

Even so, the recommendations are somewhat tool-specific. I have recently been using Gmail a lot. It is a great, great tool but has to be used differently. The recommendation to process email and put any NAs into the system is even more important since the Gmail Inbox is never going to be empty. In fact, it's just gonna keep growing. And there is no such thing as filing in the traditional sense.

[Grant]

I use Outlook and simply drag the email to the tasks folder and add the appropriate category...@Calls, etc. If necessary, I change the subject line to reflect the appropriate action, though it being in @Calls and the body of the message usually triggers my mind on what needs doing.

[ceehjay]

Are you sure? I don't have the Fast CDs, but I thought there used to be advice on handling email in the Tips & Tools section. In any case, that's not how I understood the advice on handling email.

This article on Taming Your Email (http://www.managementconsultingnews.com/articles/allen_article.php) is the same information that was in the Tips & Tools article.

Carolyn

[greyman]

Even so, the recommendations are somewhat tool-specific. I have recently been using Gmail a lot. It is a great, great tool but has to be used differently. The recommendation to process email and put any NAs into the system is even more important since the Gmail Inbox is never going to be empty. In fact, it's just gonna keep growing. And there is no such thing as filing in the traditional sense.

Maybe I misunderstood something, but why your Gmail Inbox is never going to be empty? I empty it once a day, just click Select: "All" and then "Archive". Moreover, you can emulate "filling in the traditional sense" with labels, if you want to.

greyman.

[ChuckR]

Thanks, Taxgeek. My email inboxes are my biggest GTD failure. I had shuttled emails off to a "@action" subfolder, but in essence was just creating a new inbox that had to be processed. I'm definitely going to try out your suggestion.

[andersons]

Maybe I misunderstood something, but why your Gmail Inbox is never going to be empty? I empty it once a day, just click Select: "All" and then "Archive". Moreover, you can emulate "filling in the traditional sense" with labels, if you want to.
Gmail works differently from traditional email clients. Not just the interface, but the implementation is completely different. Yes, you can get it to act more like those traditional email tools by archiving and using labels like folders. But Gmail has rendered these habits nearly obsolete.

Sometimes 'best practices' evolve to handle the problems that result from the limitations of the tool. We become comfortable with those habits; they work well for us with our tools. But if the tool's capability changes, we forget that the habits are not the goal; they were a way to reach the goal. Better tools can be developed that can render the old habits obsolete.

The habit that doesn't change with any email (or any other input, whether paper, phone call, thought popping into the head, etc.) is the need to process. Decide what to do; if there's an action, put it in your one trusted system. This was one of the powerful things I am grateful to have learned from GTD. Without exaggeration, this advice changed my chaotic life.

However, it was useful but not absolutely necessary to 'get In to empty.' The real need is to process. Some of us -- like me -- were reading email, not deciding what to do about it, delaying answering it, and leaving it in the Inbox as a physical reminder that something must be done eventually. This is bad! (When I read DA's description of this problem, oh boy did I identify and realize just how right he was!)

So if we got In to empty by processing, filing, and deleting, that meant that anything in our Inbox by definition needed processing. Just like a physical Inbox. But with Gmail, anything Unread still needs processing and constitutes my virtual Inbox for email. The interface makes it easy to see, so emptying the Inbox is so longer necessary either for performance or to make it easy to see what I still need to process. I can ignore anything in blue; it's already been read and processed. I initially had a hard time not filing and not getting In to empty. I had worked to develop those habits and they had worked well for me. But with Gmail they are no longer necessary.

With traditional email clients, we also had to have good practices for 1) filing and 2) deleting. The real purpose of filing was to be able to find stuff again when we need it. The purpose of deleting was to make it easier to find the more important stuff and to free up space.

Gmail is designed so that emails are easy and fast to find without filing. And with 2G of storage, freeing up space is not much of an issue. The purpose for filing and deleting no longer apply.

The folder interface for filing email (and everything else digital) has severe limitations, especially for large numbers of emails: hierarchies don't scale well, either for computer performance or for human memory.

It is going to be hard to move past the folder paradigm and interface. We've been using it forever. But the folder interface for digital data is going away. It's too slow and cumbersome for large amounts of data. The new Windows Vista is will index files and search fast just as Google has been doing for the web (about time, too!).

If you're interested in reading an incredibly smart person's analysis of interface limitations, check out the The Anti-Mac Interface (http://www.acm.org/pubs/cacm/AUG96/antimac.htm).

Now if only someone could come up with a way to eliminate the need for paper filing. The Gmail equivalent for paper would be a Superman assistant who could search mountains of paper to find the one you need in about 2 seconds.

[jkgrossi]

The artifact (an email) isn't a next action, though. It's probably got one that goes with it, but the email itself usually doesn't tell you what you need to do with it. If you just toss the emails that require responses into your @Action folder, each time you look at one of them, you have to figure out what the next action is for each email.

It seems like you want a way to transmogrify the emails into next actions, so you can keep track of what you need to do with the emails in addition to the emails themselves. (The GTD outlook plugin tries to do something like this, but I found it awkward.)

I know... I'm just relaying what David recommended in the CD program...

[jkgrossi]

Are you sure? I don't have the Fast CDs, but I thought there used to be advice on handling email in the Tips & Tools section. In any case, that's not how I understood the advice on handling email.

It is always extra work to write down any NA. But if you don't, you will not have them all in one trusted system, right?

If it's OK to skip writing down actions that come from emails on my list, then can I also skip writing down actions that come from paper mail, and just put the mail itself in an "Action" pile? That seems like the old strategy I had before reading GTD that let's just say did not work well for me.

I understood the @Actions email folder to be an action support folder. The action is written down on NA lists. If the email is needed when you decide to do the action, you can find it easily because it's in its action support email folder.

So the Inbox would contain only emails I have not yet processed into my one trusted system. @Action contains emails I need to refer to when I do the action I recorded in my system. Other email reference folders contain email that I may or may not refer to in the distant future, emails not associated with any of my NAs.

At least this is how I understood the recommendations I read on handling email. They made a lot of sense to me and kicked my butt into processing over 6,000 emails (or was it 8,000) that were in my Inbox.

Even so, the recommendations are somewhat tool-specific. I have recently been using Gmail a lot. It is a great, great tool but has to be used differently. The recommendation to process email and put any NAs into the system is even more important since the Gmail Inbox is never going to be empty. In fact, it's just gonna keep growing. And there is no such thing as filing in the traditional sense.

Pretty sure... I just listened to them again last week.

[andersons]

Pretty sure... I just listened to them again last week.

I assume DA was talking about using Outlook for email. (Does everybody use it?) I see in another post that emails can be tasks in Outlook. So I guess if all your tasks are in Outlook and emails can be tasks, they would be in one system. That's pretty cool.

I use an arcane email client, Pine, and having actions in an @Actions folder in Pine is just horrible. Even having action support in @ActionSupport folder was horrible.

[Desultory]

I assume DA was talking about using Outlook for email. (Does everybody use it?)
Hardly. I'll bet there's some Notes and Eudora users reading this.

My arcane email client is Pegasus. When I first started GTD, I was really good at emptying my Inbox and dropping emails into my Action folder. Only recently have I trained myself to actually deal with those emails. As for identifying the NA, usually it's writing back. If there's some research I have to do first, generally I do it without recording it in the system. And yes, that means holding stuff in my head for a while, but it works. I suppose if it was really complicated I might set up a mini-project and make the outcome "I have answered so-and-so's question."

FWIW
Pam

[andersons]

This article on Taming Your Email (http://www.managementconsultingnews.com/articles/allen_article.php) is the same information that was in the Tips & Tools article.
Carolyn

Carolyn, you're right! I pulled out my printout of the old Tips & Tools article. It was revised a little for the Management Consulting News article, but clearly gives both options for handling actionable emails (using the email itself in an @Action folder versus writing it into your system). However, the old article implies that DA is talking about using a specific tool, apparently Outlook. That implication has been removed from the new article. It has been a long time since I gave the first strategy a try. It worked so badly for me I assumed it must have been my own idea. But I see now that Outlook's features make this a viable strategy.

[spectecGTD]

David is very specific about this potential problem in the FAST CD when he discusses working from zero base in email. He emphasizes that once you have moved emails from the inbox into other folders, it is imperative to have the self-discipline to then return to those folders at the appropriate time. Otherwise, the old "out-of-sight / out-of-mind" numbness will be very likely to dominate.

As I see it, emptying the inbox is not an end in and of itself.
The purpose in emptying the inbox is to make an upfront, intelligent decision about what to do with each new input you've allowed into your life as it shows up. But once the decision is made, it's invalidated if the embedded follow-through isn't accomplished. Failure to follow through just renders the original decision meaningless at best, and creates a potentially greater problem at worst.

[andersons]

David is very specific about this potential problem in the FAST CD when he discusses working from zero base in email. He emphasizes that once you have moved emails from the inbox into other folders, it is imperative to have the self-discipline to then return to those folders at the appropriate time. Otherwise, the old "out-of-sight / out-of-mind" numbness will be very likely to dominate.

Yes, that's exactly what happened to me! I don't have the CDs, but the Tips & Tools article mentions it too. I think mine was a beginner mistake: I felt good about processing 8,000 emails by deleting some and organizing the rest into folders. But I didn't realize the followthrough and need for maintenance I had just created. I heard the part about "Get In to empty" and my mind was so shocked with the idea of it that I barely noticed "You'll have to be disciplined about those @Action folders." But it was also a problem with my email tool and system: switching folders is a pain. And the emails in them sure don't show up as "Tasks" anywhere.

[Jason Womack]

It was worth the money and the time in the seminar for just that one epiphany.


Just last Friday I presented a seminar to a long-time client up in Reno, NV. As I looked out at the start of the seminar, I saw a familiar face.

Turns out he had attended a seminar I presented earlier this year, and signed up again! At the end, he approached me and said, "I got more out of this one than the first one!" I got to share my personal story with him...

Between 1997 and 2000, I attended 5 seminars with David Allen. It wasn't until the spring semester, 2000, when we created a high schoolers version of GTD (I got to present it to 60 students...each "session" lasted 8 weeks), that I finally started to "get" the real principles incorporated in GTD.

[sablouwho]

I too attended the GTD Road Map seminar in Santa Monica on 7/21--I had first head of DA and GTD around January, and I read the book at that time, and shortly thereafter had purchased the GTD Add-in for Outlook.

It was only after that I came back from the seminar a week and a half ago that I realized how incredibly powerful of a habit it is to decide N/A's for my email inbox. This was especially because a LOT of the emails required me to do stuff "in the real world" and not on the computer.

I am still in the implementation stage, but I cannot begin to say what a huge difference this habit has made in getting through all of those emails and actually DOING something with them!

~Cindy

[chinarut]

Maybe I misunderstood something, but why your Gmail Inbox is never going to be empty? I empty it once a day, just click Select: "All" and then "Archive". Moreover, you can emulate "filling in the traditional sense" with labels, if you want to.

wow...this sounds like a *great* idea...ever since my laptop crapped out on me and I went gung ho web-mail (losing my GTD Add-in in the process) - I'd been trying to figure out how to effectively get my inbox to zero, not waste time writing NAs, and keep my system simple and online on web!

If anyone has other suggestions for web-dominant paradigms, I really would love to hear more from you.

now to figure out what to do with all my OLD gmail labels...

[brewdogmike]

I've been a heavy Outlook user up until now, and the problem I've been having has been caused by the convenience of dragging and dropping emails into folders.

The problem is, when I go back to review the folders, I have to read through all the emails again to figure out what action I should take (or should have taken back when I got the email). I'm getting rid of the Outlook folders -- if an email itself is worth keeping, it gets printed and filed. The action steps go on the calendar or appropriate list.

I got rid of the @Action folder too, because it was getting ignored. Now I've got a !Today folder just for today-specific actions.

Anyone else have Outlook folder overload?

[spectecGTD]

This may or may not work for you, but in addition to my project-specific folders and @Action folder, I also have a @Review Weekly and @Review Monthly folders in my email. It's amazing how many things I simply move into the Weekly and Monthly folders because my N/A is to defer. Sometimes the "defer" decision is because I just don't want or need to deal with the email until a later time, sometimes because I know the situation will/may resolve itself without my taking further action, and sometimes there is a time-specific decision that is "not now".

As with any system, this only works if you rigorously follow the protocol for the folders. You must actually open the weekly folder at least at the beginning of the week and open the monthly folder at the beginning of the month. For example, if you send me an email that says "lets have lunch sometime next week", I'll send you one back that says something to the effect that "Sounds good - I'll get back to you on Monday. Who's paying?" and then it goes into my "Review Weekly" because the first thing I do on Monday AM (or even Sunday PM) is go through that folder.

[andersons]

The problem is, when I go back to review the folders, I have to read through all the emails again to figure out what action I should take (or should have taken back when I got the email).
I found that this is a huge disadvantage. I don't want to re-read emails to re-compute what action I could take. If I think about the action once, then put it in my system with all the rest of my actions, it will get done.

Maybe if everyone who emails me starts putting clear NAs in the subject line, I'll be able to use the email itself as the NA reminder. (As in when hell freezes over.)

I do not print the emails, though. I keep them to reply to later. And I find digital searching and filing less overhead than paper, especially with Gmail.


Anyone else have Outlook folder overload?
Not Outlook folders, but don't like navigating through similar folders in Pine. That's why I'm loving Gmail. No more folders needed! No filing whatsoever! I can find an old email in Gmail much faster than I can pull one out of my Pine or paper folders.

But all NAs go on my lists with the others. Unlike spectecGTD, I unfortunately do not do well with creating more things I must review.

[spectecGTD]

Yes, you raise a valid point with respect to re-reading emails.
I should clarify that using my system only certain emails go into the "review weekly/monthly" folders. Those which I can handle using the 2-minute rule and those which deserve immediate attention still get handled in the normal manner. And if I don't have 2 minutes I will move others into the "Action" folder knowing that I have to get back to them ASAP. My entire focus is keeping that inbox empty, and I do mean empty. However, in my situation I receive many emails which can be scanned in a few seconds and safely dispatched to the weekly/monthly folder.

BTW, I too find it aggravating when people are too lazy or lack enough understanding of what they are writing to compose a decent subject line. It would be nice if they cared enough to learn how helpful this is to them and their correspondents. One tactic I use is to change the subject line to something meaningful when or if I reply to them. At least then if they respond further to me I have a useful subject line next time around.

And of course I generally delete or just refuse to answer any emails which have no subject line or simply "RE:", unless I know the sender is someone who just has poor email communication skills.

[scott m]

I recommend building 5-7 subfolders to manage your email Actions. I have taught this technique to over 300 people, and I think it has value. Things should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. One action bucket seemed too simple for my email. Here's the additional folders.
1_Monday
2_Tuesday
3_Wednesday
4_Thursday
5_Friday

Saturday and Sunday are optional. Naming them this way makes them sort correctly in the window.

At the end of every day, your inbox should have been emptied at least once, and your Daily Action Folder should be empty. Everything in it is either deleted, filed in a reference folder, or defered to another day. This way your action folder doesn't become a bottomless pit.

The daily process: Empty your inbox. Check your Waiting For and followup or delete them as needed. Open today's Daily Action Folder and keep it open. Check and empty your inbox as needed throughout the day. Even if it is a to-do for today, unless it is a 2-min. action, drag it to today's daily folder. Always go back to your daily action folder and keep it open. It contains every email you have already seen that needs to be handled today, and nothing else. Your inbox only contains emails you haven't read yet. The focus is awesome.

Scott
moehrings@alltel.net

[tuqqer]

Oh, I completely relate to this massive insight, taxgeek. It was the biggest one for me as well (from the book). It all stemmed from that idea that once you "pick something up", you deal with it then, even if it's to figure out where it belongs.

Because I only have one Context—LIFE IN FRONT OF HOME OFFICE COMPUTER (pathetic perhaps, but recognizing this truth was my Second Insight)— my Inbox was one of the bigger places I needed to work with. So, after thinking about it for awhile, I contacted an AppleScript writer, Bryan Harris, and had him write what I think is one of the best GTD "applications" ever designed. It only works with Macs OSX, and for Entourage, but it's free to anyone who wants it. Here's what it does:

** When an email comes in that needs to be dealt with at some later time (ranging from 1 minute, to 10 hours, to 10 days, to 10 years, etc), you hit Control-P for "Postpone". The following window comes up:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v416/sequoia1234/Picture4.png

** You enter in any amount of time you want to postpone, again from a few minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months.

** These each get stored in a folder you've set up, called Postponed.

** When the set time comes up, that particular email will get thrown back into the Inbox. To prevent confusion and mark it as such, the word "POST" gets placed in front of the Subject line.

** If you still need more time to deal with that email, you can simply run the script again, as described above. Each time you re-postpone the email, it sticks another "POST" in the subject line.

Since hiring Bryan to design this beauty 2 years ago, I use this script virtually every hour of my waking day. It's super fast, and my most effective way for outlining my plans of action. And the side benefit is that, even with 200 emails a day, my Inbox is almost always truly empty.

I'm no expert at GTD. I struggle with a couple areas in my organization of life. But GTD has been a life saver for me, and I know that I'm getting more of my dreams accomplished than ever before. And at 49, this is one meaningful accomplishment for me.

You can download this little Entourage utility at:
http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/

Do a search for "Postpone" and the script called Postpone, Delayed Send (http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/) will show up. If you've never installed an AppleScript into Entourage, just read the how to there at the main page.

And if you find the script useful, just email Bryan and tell him so. I'm sure he'd appreciate $5-10 as well.

Thanks for this post, texgeek. Brought back my gratitude for all of this.

tuqqer
http://www.howhealthworks.com

[andersons]

Yes, you raise a valid point with respect to re-reading emails.
Actually, I need to qualify my point too. I have 2 kinds of actionable emails:
1) I have to decide an action; it's not immediately obvious in the subject or body. Example: I get an email asking me to incorporate major changes into an upcoming event I have been planning for 3 months. Or information about a new funding opportunity.
2) The action itself is to spend time thoughtfully answering the email. Example: questions from students when I'm teaching a course.

For #1, I try to decide the action when I first read the email, put the NA in my system right away.

For #2, I flag them and go back and answer them in a big session more like you describe (but less disciplined/scheduled). Flagging is functionally equivalent to filing them in folders, but an easier/lazier way with my email clients. Of course I use the 2-minute rule here, too, and I sometimes modify it to a 5-minute rule or whatever seems most efficient.


BTW, I too find it aggravating when people are too lazy or lack enough understanding of what they are writing to compose a decent subject line. It would be nice if they cared enough to learn how helpful this is to them and their correspondents. One tactic I use is to change the subject line to something meaningful when or if I reply to them. At least then if they respond further to me I have a useful subject line next time around.
Fortunately, most university email I receive has a descriptive subject line. I've asked a couple other key people who email me to use specific subject lines, and they now do. However, I have helped a few people with their inboxes and have been appalled at the useless/missing subject lines, excessive quoting and cc-ing, incomprehensible body text, etc.

A minor annoyance I've had is email from friends who use it only recreationally and send all these forwarded stories and jokes. (Like that story about Nordstrom's cookie recipe.) Many times the forwarded story includes the header information from every time it got forwarded, plus many layers of quotes-of-quotes-of-quotes interspersed with "Isn't this funny?" I just delete them as soon as I glance at them and hope my friends will never ask me if I read them and get offended that I didn't. So far, so good. :-)

Lots of great email tips in this thread.

[spectecGTD]

"Compose the email, THEN the subject line"

Yes, I totally agree - there have been lots of good email tips on this thread. Somewhere in the not-too-distant past I read the above tip either on this BB or somewhere else. (Maybe you posted it on another thread)

This practice has been extremely helpful to me. Often the descriptive subject line is clear before I even begin the email, but if that isn't the case then I just go ahead and write. In almost every instance the process of composing the email will produce an "aha" moment in which it becomes crystal clear what should appear in a truly useful subject line.