Answer e-mail in time

I have 12 mails in my _ACTION folder and 9 waiting for something (an answer, receiving something I ordered).

I have zero, none, zip, nil in my inbox! So it works. I just have to stick with the discipline of sorting immediately (not doing something immediately, this is why it works).

I’m not quite there yet, but it’s working. I process everything once a day, being quite ruthless. If it takes less than 2 minutes, I answer. Otherwise, into one of the 3 folders. My IN basket is empty, I have 36 mails to process in _ACTION.

But I want to clear all the backlog before I mark the goal done. It should be done by the end of the week.

It’s one of my first steps in implementing Getting Things Done.

I used to leave messages “unread” (even after reading them) to indicate a further action (answer, do something, archive an attachment…) Result (obvious in hindsight): hundreds of unread messages, some more than 1 year old.

I’ve created three folders (_ACTION, _READ, _WAITING FOR). Now:

• I answer immediately and file the message, or
• I drag the mail in _ACTION when I have to do something about it (a longer answer, some research…)
• The mail goes in _READ if there’s some reading to do later (eg mailing list, newsletter)
• If I’m waiting for something I have no control over, it goes into _WAITING FOR

I’ll exercise the setup some more and mark the goal done!