My Inbox was getting me down.  In fact, even worse, it was controlling my day!

So I went postal on it – if you can pardon the terrible pun.
I spent the last part of my day attacking my inbox and taking on some board some pretty cool ideas and methods of managing it that one of my colleagues had shared with me.

The first thing he had told me to do was turn off my new mail notifications.
Even the thought of that had me all a-flutter for a few minutes.  How would I know when I had new mail?
He said to me “Tara, read your email when you are ready. Plus it avoids those pesky last minute – attend my 5 minute meeting in 5 minutes meeting requests”.  So I did.  And it was good.

The next step was to get rid of the folders.
We’re in the indexing age now and I really should have Google’d up my email a long time ago.  So I dropped all the folders and moved the email I was storing into yearly .pst files and indexed those puppies.  And it was good.

Then came the hard part.  I had to look at what was in my Inbox (17,452 items) and apply the 4 D’s …

• Do It
• Date It
• Delegate It
• Delete It

SCARY!!!  It was a very daunting task but as my workmate said “whats the worst that can happen if you dont have that email or dont reply?”

And true!  Around here, if you dont reply to an email in about 5 minutes, the person that sent it to you calls you anyway.  And comes over to track you down.  And leaves a voicemail on your mobile.  So I set to work.

What I could get done – I did it.  That’s the Do It.

And as this was Outlook, I right clicked and dragged the ones I needed to do at some time in to my Task List, popped a quick category on them and set a realistic Due By Date on them.  That’s the Date It.

Anything that is no longer needed to be done by me or is part of the work I have handed over, I sent on to someone else.  Ohh yeaa, that’s the Delegate It.

Just like the secret hoarder that I am, there was a bunch of stuff sitting there – well, there was just a bunch of stuff still sitting there.  This was the most fun, I popped one of those elongated sticky notes on my laptop keys and sat there being ruthless and hitting Delete It.

I am down to 14 emails in my Inbox.  I have 28 Tasks that need to be completed.   And it is good.

I can read through anything that comes in while I am riding the bus in the morning, set them up as tasks when I get to work, and have a productive day.
I am pretty confident that this little system will work nicely for me.  What’s the worst that can happen!!
It still takes a little bit of management but my Inbox will no longer rule me.  I will rule it!