Project Inbox Zero
Posted 02/25/2010 - 09:08 by Brian Myrick
Like many of you, I have a tumultuous relationship with email. I get a couple of thousand emails per week - that's how many I get that I don't consider spam, but it does include marketing emails that I perceive as permitted - iTunes Classical Music Spotlight or Sports Boosters Event notices. (We use and recommend Red Condor for AntiSpam.)
I need to get email. The number one way my customers and partners communicate with me is via email. Email literally keeps me in business - so I love it. But its hard to get and stay organized that way.
Of course, you can put email in folders by project or recipient. All mail clients support this. Some mail clients (mine is Mail that comes with OS X) have great search capabilities. I've even extended my mail client with add-ons that let you quickly tag and and file your messages. (By using a combination of tags and search, you can essentially put a message in more than one folder - something you can't do just using a hierarchical filing system.)
Even with all of that, I have trouble keeping up and my inbox gets clogged.
Those tagging and filing add-ons don't work on my phone. So if I see a message on my phone (happens a lot), I can't tag it and file it. So it just sits there until later.
Then I have stress because I have so many messages in my inbox that require me to do something. And its messy and I know I need to clean it up.
Sound familiar?
A while ago I learned about something called Inbox Zero. I used it for a while, then fell out of the habit when my workflow changed. But a colleague recently reminded me about it. So I used the convergence of several events (new email hosting service, new trial service of 37Signals, and his reminder) to give it a try again.
Here's what it is in a nutshell:
"Don't check your email; Process your email. After you have processed it, you will have zero messages in your inbox."
In order to process your email, you must disposition each message as soon as you read it. There are 5 different ways to disposition a message:
That's pretty much it. Regardless of how the message is processed (short of being deleted), most people like to keep the messages as a record or transcript of the interaction. I've found that keeping that record in the email client is counter productive.
Let's have some examples:
I received an email from a client asking about a problem they were having with Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 and Microsoft was blaming their Cisco switch. We had about a dozen messages go back and forth about that.
I used to keep all of those messages in my Mail client - hopefully tagging and filing them. If I responded from my phone, those messages just stay in my inbox waiting until I could get around to tagging and filing them.
New workflow: Instead, what I do now - when I answer them, I BCC a web service then delete the original message. I use 37signals HighRise to manage all my client projects, deals, cases etc. HighRise keeps the record of all interaction with the client. And if any one else might need to go back and look at previous interactions, they don't have to look in my email - they look on HighRise. I can even give clients access to their projects and cases in HighRise.
HighRise works great for messages that I "process" with a response - it keeps the transcript of interaction with the client.
It also works great for messages that I process with "delegate" - I can ask a colleague to address this. I BCC HighRise and put it right on their HighRise task list. If I process with "defer", I just forward it to my HighRise task list.
Or course, not all messages are really a good fit for HighRise - for instance: receipts from online purchases, license keys, credit report alerts. These could go into HighRise but for me that doesn't really seem appropriate. These kinds of messages belong more in my notebook.
For a digital notebook, I extensively use Evernote. If I receive a license key or email receipt, I just forward that email to Evernote. You can have emails, notes, images, files, pictures, and audio in your Evernote notebooks.
The goal of Inbox Zero is to process your emails and have zero messages in your inbox at the end of each session. By combining this methodology with 2 additional tools (HighRise and Evernote) I have been able to get and stay more organized.
iPhone Apps
Evernote App for iPhone
Floor 13 HighRise App for iPhone
