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Email - From a Mountain to a Molehill

Posted on: 2006-11-12

I blogged a few months ago about how I manage my email. At the time, I was proud to claim that I had reduced my 'Unread and Flag' listing to a mere 300 or so messages, down from thousands I used to have a few years ago. Well, now I'm down to 13 messages!

That's right, 13.

This has been helped with the wrapping up of a few projects, so I could get rid of the 'keep this around so you remember to do it' messages, which make up a lot of my back-log. I've also realized how much more I'm just using the built-in search functionality to look for things across the entire mail collection instead of having to go through my current listing - this means that unless it absolutely needs to be in front of my face, it can just go away and be searched for later if necessary.

Also, I'm now trying to take Saturday as my 'catch up' day - I go through my mail, pay my bills, track my receipts, and now review all the messages in my 'Unread and Flag'. I had 80 in there on Saturday morning, now there's 13. What have I kept? Booking confirmations for my upcoming flights to California and Edmonton, some emails with project schedules in them, and some messages from friends and colleagues that deserve thorough replies.

It's not quite Getting Things Done, but I have been getting a lot of ideas from Merlin Mann's podcast. Life is feeling like it's almost in control. Time for some random disaster to happen, I guess.

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