Guest Post: Getting the Inbox to Zero

by LT Jeff Ferguson

So the other day I noticed that the Swoter had posted a call to delete all our pending email and send flowers to our closest associates with our regrets. That started me thinking. My problem isn't that my email accounts are overwhelming, but my inbox definitely is.

What do I mean? Well David Allen of Getting Things Done fame says that your inbox is made up of as many collection devices as you need, but no more than are absolutely necessary. So let me count mine. I have my email at work. That's one. Then there's my email at home which consists of three different accounts. I have my little notebook for work (or wheelbook for you nautical types), and of course a notebook for civilian life. If I wanted to I could probably keep just a single notebook, but I really like keeping a separate one at work that I can leave AT WORK.

Then there's the physical inbox at home for letters, bills. Now, I'm a dinosaur, and I still get bills by snail mail. Plus those boxes are filled with old keys, ticket stubs and the rest of my life's detritus. I have to keep a physical inbox at work as well for things like logs to be reviewed, award inputs to mark up, etcetera, and it's in about the same shape.


My point is that when I add all of that up I have a HUGE amount of stuff that's been collecting and is threatening to take over my space. Now to be honest, most of this is my fault. I'm not quite so diligent at processing all of my crud as I should be. That said, I still need to get out from under before I can count on any system keeping up with the influx of new items. So Here's what I came up with:

1. I'm definitely implementing the Swoter's Easy Zero (SEZ) solution for my personal email accounts. The business accounts have to be processed, but anything older than two weeks is gonna' get rapidly archived. I figure anyone worried about a reply has probably pinged me again since then.

2. The SEZ solution works for those two notebooks that I carry. Those notebooks are full of telephone numbers, to-do's, addresses, stock numbers, the name of that great beer I had at the bar, you name it. Like I mentioned, I keep one for work and one for everywhere that's not work. I went back through those notebooks, and I had no idea what most of those notes referred to. So I'm going to transpose a few of the notes that I took recently into a new notebooks, and the old ones and all that old stuff is going in the bin. I'm almost certain that I wasn't really going to do anything with the older stuff as much as I'd like to tell myself different.

3. OK, now for the hard stuff. Is there a SEZ solution for snail mail? You bet! Now, given that I still get some of my bills by pony express I can't just move the mess from my desk into the rubbish bin as much as I'd like to. I mean that most of its just junk mail, but if it makes it into our space it has to be processed or it builds into a mountain like the one I'm facing, and creates that "I've got to get organized" stress. So, keeping a wary eye out for that renegade water bill, I'm making a blitz through my piles of mail to get rid of as much as I can as fast as I can.

Trash it all! That's my motto. What I can't toss, I'll process tomorrow.

So I won't quite get my inbox to zero today. I'll get there. Even if I have to delete your email, 'cause Swoter SEZ I can.