How I did it: I set mini-goals:  figured out how many posts I could realistically deal with/delete in a week, divided my total messages by that number, and calculated when I'd be done.

I put each mini-goal in my calendar, like this:  "delete 200 e-mails (total remaining: 2400)."

I created a reward for myself.  For me, it was a personalized FranklinCovey planner, with family photos on each page.  It was extra money and unnecessary, but a little treat for getting it done, with the nice bonus of being personal-organization-related.

Lessons & tips: Be realistic about your goal and mini-goals.  Set milestones that you can achieve.

I found that getting rid of e-mails was addictive.  I'd sit down to it with dread, but soon be zooming along and want to get rid of more and more before I stopped for the day.

I also found that going by sender made things move fast.  Not sure why, but sorting by sender and then moving through helped.

I remembered the rule:  file it or respond to it or delete it.  Some things just got filed elsewhere in my inbox--I don't need to print all my meeting minutes, just know where to find them, so I consider them dealt with if they are in the right e-file. 

And the thing I dreaded most--finding some crucial question I needed to answer two years previously--only happened a few times in all the THOUSANDS of e-mails I'd accumulated.  (And clearly, the world did not end because I didn't reply at the time.  I sent "I'm so sorry I never responded to this" notes.)

To minimize that dread, I went through all the unread messages first.  Once they were done, I could stop worrying about what was hiding in there, and just plow through all the things I for some reason "filed" in my inbox.  Lots of them were old scheduling arrangements and stuff like that that I was just keeping for, um, I don't know what reason.

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Jul 17, 2010, 05:48PM PDT | 0 comments | 3 cheers