How many emails are in your inbox right now? 10? 30? Do I need to add a zero, or even a couple of them, to get in the ballpark?

My inbox is absolutely empty as I write this, and I love it. The best part is that I haven't lost any of the information I had floating around. Quite the contrary, I've stored, sorted, and crystallized it into actionable tasks and projects. I got rid of the clutter, and much to my shock and amazement (and that of several teammates), things are starting to get done!

This is a new phenomenon for me. Back at the beginning of January (that's three years ago on Internet time), I was still a confirmed email storage junkie. I do a lot of my work remotely, and email is a powerful collaboration tool for us. Digital missives fly around this team like peas in a grade school food fight. The end result, for me, was an inbox full of potential projects and erstwhile commitments. It was the electronic equivalent of Fibber McGee's closet, falling on my head every time I opened it.

For whatever reason, I finally reached my breaking point and decided I'd had enough. Since I'm a bit of a pack rat when it comes to information, I was surprised to discover that my best tool for turning that teetering digital pile of projects and deadlines into actual commitments is my Delete key.

Now, before I start sounding like yet another internet David Allen/Getting Things Done groupie, allow me to confess that I haven't even read the book. I've skimmed a few white papers and read a few forums and blog posts, but never felt motivated to dive all the way in. But he has some good ideas, and makes some valid points. I've taken the pieces that make sense to me—I created a chron file along his lines (love it), revamped my filing and my computer directories, changed my physical inbox around, and retrained my family. But that awful email inbox just kept piling up to the point that it was strangling my ability to even think, let alone get anything done.

So a few weeks ago, I took to heart one of the GTD tenets of faith: Email is not actionable; tasks are. You can't do anything with email other than read it, or perhaps reply to it. But email spawns actionable tasks. It seems like a small distinction, but for me it's proving to be a crucial one—stuff on my task list gets done. Email gets read. And neglected. Occasionally filed or replied to or even saved. But mostly it gets read. A lot. (And then neglected a lot.) I was reading those emails over and over and over without actually acting on them, so they just kept piling up; and the more they piled up, the more I felt weighed down and paralyzed by it all.

So I sat down, opened the Tasks portion of Outlook (which I'd never even looked at since installing), and organized it in a way that made sense to me. I already use categories and flags pretty extensively to sort (and re-sort and re-read and re-neglect) most of my email, so I re-jiggered those categories to match the task list I keep on my (don't laugh) PDA, and then put the Tasks button back in my regular display.

Then I went back to my inbox and looked at the very first email I saw. I sort from most recent to oldest, so it was one that had just come in that I had to "do something with." I'd said that about a dozen times now, and that mysterious something had never happened. What, I asked myself, do I have to do about this? I decided, created an Outlook task by dragging that email to the tasks button, and categorized it. It popped up in my task panel just the way I expected it to. I had something to do now! And then I highlighted that email, held my breath, and hit the Delete key.

Nothing happened.

There were no explosions, no crashes, nothing momentous. But the email count in my inbox dropped by one, and I suddenly felt one email lighter. It felt pretty good—just by getting that number to change in the right direction, I'd gotten something done. So I did it again. And again. Three tasks. The next one wasn't actionable, but I'd be foolish to throw it away, so I filed it in a subfolder. The next several were no longer useful to anyone (Do I really need to hold on to that reply email that says nothing more than "Thanks"? Really?), so I simply deleted them outright. It felt so rewarding that I spent over six hours organizing my email that weekend—filing, tasking, categorizing, and deleting with absolute ruthlessness. Then I went through my personal inbox and did the same thing. When I came up for air, both were pristine and white, and I was a little abashed to see how many tasks and projects had languished there, withering away into near irrelevance. So I picked a task off of the list, and I did it.

Man, did that feel good!

My inboxes have stayed empty for three weeks now. My task list is definitely not. But when emails come in, I'm processing them immediately—act, save, defer, or delete. (That delete feels good, and I find that the more I trust my task list for actual tasks, the less I feel I have to save.) And instead of endlessly combing through that pile of emails, reading and re-reading, trying to decide what's next, I pick up my action item lists, and I pick an action, and I do it. Plus, emails aren't getting lost in the shuffle anymore—there's nowhere for them to get lost in the vast white emptiness they land in. Since tasks are easier to tally and estimate than emails, I have fewer and fewer hidden projects pulling down my workload. And perhaps best of all, I'm in a better mood! Opening email is no longer an occasion for sighing and fretting and stress. I have 10-20 emails to process in the morning, not 300 or more, and I handle the rest in manageable windows during the day, a few at a time as they come in, by sorting out the true action items from the stuff I just need to read, or reply to, or save for reference … and then I do.

Sure, I'll do that Tuesday. DELETE!

Love it.

So how about it—anyone else want to join me at inbox ground zero?

Related Resources

• I'll Get Those Priorities to You Tomorrow... But First..
• Personal Time Management Assessment Log
• Priorities, Goals, and Actions Alignment Worksheet
• How do I figure out where my time is going every day?

Comments

Appreciate having this blow by blow account of your inbox recovery! I am unfortunately one of those people who would have to add zeros to the number of stuff still in my inbox, and I will not admit to how many you'd have to add... which leads to a question I have about your approach.

I get the approach of turning an email into a task in Outlook, then deleting the email. But what gives me pause is the idea of deleting the email, because I use Outlook as a massive filing cabinet of conversations. If I delete the email, I remove it from the stream of contacts/conversations/status exchange around that particular topic. And i tend to go back to those threads to remind myself of the details/sequence of events, contacts around a particular subject.

Am I missing something? Should I be getting that historical benefit differently? (I fully admit to being a lightweight Outlook user compared to you.) Very interested in your take on this aspect.

Fair point! I don't delete *every* email, and my still swollen PST file is a testament to my pack rat nature. :) But I'm finding that I'm a bit more selective about what I really need to keep, as opposed to what I am simply used to keeping. Basically, I'm using our meeting minutes guidelines here: Will it matter in six weeks? Will it matter in six months? Will someone who isn't part of this conversation now need to see it later? If the answer to any of the above is yes, or even maybe, I don't delete things so much as move them into my (extensive) reference folders. I have folders set up by general project area and project name, and just stuff the emails in there. But if I look at a conversation and know that the email exchange won't matter after the task is completed, why keep it outside of the task? Tasks are searchable too, of course, so that provides duplicate documentation.

The other thing that's catching me is my tendency to keep the straggling emails -- "OK, I'll take care of that." "Thanks." "np." 3 separate emails, each of which probably includes the full text of the 5 emails that started it all ... there's a lot of extra bits there, but no real value. So I record the action/agreement in the tasks, and then delete with extreme prejudice.

So I don't delete everything, only unimportant things. But I've expanded my definition of unimportant to include anything I wouldn't normally record in an action item or refer to in a lessons learned meeting.

Case in point, I found myself searching around for an email thread this afternoon. Apparently, the conversation in question fell to my delete-happy axe when I went through my box -- it's not in my reference folders. I was uncomfortable for a minute or two because I couldn't find it, until I realized that all I really wanted to do was re-read it again, to confirm that I'd said thus-and-such to so-and-so when that task was handed off. But I don't *need* to read that. I know the task is handed off, and so does the task recipient. Reading the conversation wouldn't illuminate anything, add any clarity, or reveal any new action items. In a word, it no longer matters. I was itching to re-read it as a crutch more than anything; it'd be much faster to call or email the other party and say, "Remember when we talked about this last month? What's the status?" In short, I was right to delete that email thread -- I don't need it anymore. But it did give me an uncomfortable feeling at first; it might be less nerve-wracking to move to a reference filing system as an interim step.

DeAnna,

I envy your determination and ability to slay the inbox dragon.

I read GTD and I am still struglling with the knowing-doing gap.

Great post. very inspiring.