Simplify.

I said i wanted to simplify my life,

i never said i wanted to get rid of the internet.

but alas, these days i don’t have internet at home.

on the plus side, home life is much simpler. i have more free time where internet would have sapped up my time.

on the down side, its harder to keep in touch with family. (though i have started writing more snail mail letters).

Mono-tasking is the thing to do

For Sure.

Stopped using a draining socialnetworkingsite.
I feel more free now.

Am trying to use the computer less now
Have stopped turning on computer first thing in the morning
It’s really not that hard
The urges to check my e-mail aren’t that strong anymore
And they were mostly out of habit before

In place of using the computer
I have started (read: will do more in the future) visiting friends, baking, calling people more often. Feels so much more natural that way.

That e-mail trick is really great.

Archiving all e-mails and tagging the ones I need to respond to.

I don’t feel stressed when I check my e-mail and don’t have time to respond to all of them, I just tag ‘em and worry about ‘em when I do have time.

I also downloaded RescueTime to keep track of exactly how much time I spend online/using applications a day. That way I can be amazed at how much time adds up and be inspired to get away from the computer. PS- I spent 2.5 hours checking/ responding to e-mails between today and yesterday. Hm.

I took zenhabits’ advice and responded to all my e-mails. I’m going to try and see how long I can keep that up for. Also, I created a Respond tag on my g-mail, so I can keep things organized- err, keep track of what needs to be done.

Also changed my FreeCycle subscription to a daily digest, so I’m not flooded with 40 e-mails a day.

And changed my livejournal Friends Page to not including some of the communities I’m in (I’ll just look at those on the web when I feel the need)- but it was getting to be overwhelming whenever I would log in to see what my friends were up to, and getting inundated with all that too.

I unsubscribed from a few more mailing lists
and got rid of s’more possessions.
The more, the better. (the more i get rid of, the better, i mean) (i don’t need much).

I also took the growing pile of recycling out of my room, making the room seem much less cluttered.

Email Zen: Clear Out Your Inbox

I use Gmail exclusively for email, and it constitutes a major part of my two day jobs. I get a fair amount of email each hour, and I am pretty quick at responding.

However, one thing you’ll notice about my Gmail inbox is that it is just about always empty.

It gives me a Zen feeling to have a clean inbox, a feeling of peace and calm and satisfaction. I highly recommend it to everyone. I wasn’t always like this — I had many emails in my inbox in the past. They would sit in there, sometimes unread, sometimes just waiting on an action, sometimes waiting to be filed, and others just waiting because I was procrastinating. I also had many folders for filing my email, so I could find them when I needed them. It would take me awhile to file sometimes, so I would put it off. Many people I know are the same way.

But GTD changed that (as well as 43 Folders and others), and for nearly a year now, I’ve been fairly consistent about having a clean inbox.

Here are my simple steps to achieving Email Zen:

1) Don’t check email first thing in the morning, or have it constantly on. This is a tip offered by many blogs, so nothing new here. Checking email first thing will get you stuck in email for awhile. Instead, do your most important thing for the day, or the thing you’ve been procrastinating on the most. Then check email. Better yet, do 2 or 3 things first. Also, if you are constantly checking email throughout the day, or it notifies you as soon as an email comes in, you will be constantly distracted and not able to focus on the task before you. I check once an hour, but you might have different needs.

2) When you check your email, dispose of each one, one at a time, right away. Make a decision on what needs to be done on each email.

2a) Is it junk or some forwarded email? Trash it immediately.

2b) Is it a long email that you just need to read for information? File it in a Read folder (or tag it Read and archive) or print it to read on the road (while waiting in line, for example).

2c) If the email requires action, make a note of the action on your to-do or GTD lists to do later. Also note to check the email for info if necessary. Then archive the email. You can easily find it later when you need to do that task.

2d) If you can respond to it in a minute or two, do so immediately. Don’t put it off. If you wait, you’ll end up with a backlog of emails to respond to, and you may never get around to it. I respond quickly, with a short note, and send it right away. That way I’m viewed as responsive and on top of things.

2e) If you need to follow up on the email later, or are waiting for a response, note it on a Waiting For list. Don’t just leave it in your inbox as a reminder.

3) I have only one folder: Archive. When I respond to an email, or finish reading it if it doesn’t need response, or note it on my to-do list, I archive it. Simple as that. You could add a Read folder if you want. I usually print longer ones to read later, like during lunch or while waiting for something. Other people have an Action folder or a Waiting For folder, but I find that that’s just an additional inbox (or “bucket” as GTD’s David Allen calls it) that you have to constantly check. I don’t like to check extra folders. I have my to-do lists and my Waiting For list, and that’s good enough. So it’s as simple as pressing “Archive” on an email, and if I need to find it later, Gmail’s search is so good that it’s easy to find. I’ve never had any problems with this system.

Email Zen is that easy: check email at regular periods, take action on each email right away (or note it on a list to do later) and archive.

Ahhh. Empty inbox!

got rid of many pounds of junk mail that had accumulated over the past few months (i recycled it)

that’s a lot of mail

that i would prefer not to get

tomorrow i will call up the most prominent offenders
and ask to be taken off their snail mail list

citibank, southbridgesavingsbank- i’ll contact them first.

life would be much easier without junk mail looming over my head.

Started washing my hair with apple cider vinegar and baking soda. Feels the same as before, if not a little shinier. Much simpler. No more impossibletopronounce ingredients in my shampoo/conditioner. Maybe I can even buy the ACV locally to decrease transit miles (there’s an apple orchard a few miles away).

It’s in the trial stages now- seeing how it treats my hair, but it seems to be working well, and my life feels simpler.

I deleted a hundred or (two hundred) people off my AIM buddy list today, if that counts. They were people I haven’t talked to in years, or ever at all, and they were just clogging up my space.

I need my space.

10 Steps to Become an Email Ninja

I don’t know about you, but I get dozens — if not hundreds — of emails a day.

Unlike most people, however, I’m able to process through them, respond quickly, and get my inbox empty in 20 minutes (checking perhaps 2-3 times a day).

In fact, I respond so quickly, and empty my inbox so quickly, that friends have called me an “email ninja”.

Let’s look at some simple strategies for being able to get your inbox to done in as little time as possible…

Pre-empt
The first stage of any email strategy is to stop any unnecessary email from getting into your inbox in the first place. When I said I get perhaps hundreds of emails a day, I deceived a bit — most of those emails never make it to the inbox. They go straight to the spam folder or the trash. You only want the essential emails in your inbox, or you’ll be overwhelmed.

1. Junk. I recommend using Gmail, as it has the best spam filter possible. I get zero spam in my inbox. That’s a huge improvement over my previous accounts at Yahoo and Hotmail, where I’d have to tediously mark dozens of emails as spam.

2. Notifications. I often get notifications from the many online services I use, from Amazon to WordPress to PayPal and many more. As soon as I notice those types of notifications filling up my inbox, I create a filter (or “rule” if you use Mail.app or Outlook) that will automatically put these into a folder and mark them as read, or trash them, as appropriate. So for my PayPal notifications, I can always go and check on them in my “payments” folder if I like, but they never clutter my inbox.

3. Batch work. I get certain emails throughout the day that require quick action (like 10-15 seconds each). As I know these emails pretty well, I created filters that send them into a “batch” folder to be processed once a day. Takes a couple minutes to process the whole folder, and I don’t have to see them in my inbox.

4. Stupid joke emails. If you have friends and family who send you chain emails and joke emails and the like, email them and let them know that you are trying to lessen the huge amount of email you have to deal with, and while you appreciate them thinking of you, you’d rather not receive those kinds of messages. Some people will be hurt. They’ll get over it. Others will continue to send the emails. I create a filter for them that sends them straight in the trash. Basically, they’re on my killfile. If they ever send an important email (which is rare), they’ll call me eventually and ask why I haven’t responded. I tell them that their email must be in my spam folder.

5. Publish policies. As most people who email me get my contact info from my website, I’ve created a set of policies published on my about page that are designed to pre-empt the most common emails. If people follow my policies, I will get very little email. For example, instead of emailing me to ask for a link, they can save the link in my del.icio.us inbox … for suggestions or comments or questions, they can post them on a couple pages I created for that purpose. I’m also planning on creating an FAQ page for more common questions and issues. These policies remove the burden on me to respond to every request — I still read the comments and questions, but I only respond if I have time. My inbox has been under a much lighter burden these days.

Processing the rest
So now that only the essential emails come into your inbox, the question is how to get it empty in 20 minutes? I should warn you that the “20 minutes” time frame is how long it takes me — your mileage may vary, depending on how practiced you are at the following methods, and how much email you get, and how focused you keep yourself. However, in any case, you should be able to get your inbox empty in a minimal amount of time using these methods.

I should also note: if you have a very full inbox (hundreds or thousands of messages), you should create a temporary folder (”to be filed”) and get to them later, processing them perhaps 30 minutes at a time until you’re done with that. Start with your inbox empty, and use the following techniques to keep it empty, in as little time as possible.

6. Have an external to-do system. Many times the reason an email is lingering in our inbox is because there is an action required in order to process it. Instead of leaving it in your inbox, and using the inbox as a de facto to-do list, make a note of the task required by the email in your to-do system … a notebook, an online to-do program, a planner, whatever. Get the task out of your inbox. Make a reference to the email if necessary. Then archive the email and be done with it. This will get rid of a lot of email in your inbox very quickly. You still have to do the task, but at least it’s now on a legitimate to-do list and not keeping your inbox full.

7. Process quickly. Work your way from top to bottom, one email at a time. Open each email and dispose of it immediately. Your choices: delete, archive (for later reference), reply quickly (and archive or delete the message), put on your to-do list (and archive or delete), do the task immediately (if it requires 2 minutes or less — then archive or delete), forward (and archive or delete). Notice that for each option, the email is ultimately archived or deleted. Get them out of the inbox. Never leave them sitting there. And do this quickly, moving on to the next email. If you practice this enough, you can plow through a couple dozen messages very quickly.

8. Be liberal with the delete key. Too often we feel like we need to reply to every email. But we don’t. Ask yourself, “What’s the worst that will happen if I delete this?” If the answer isn’t too bad, just delete it and move on. You can’t reply to everything. Just choose the most important ones, and reply to them. If you limit the emails you actually reply to or take action on, you get the most important stuff done in the least amount of time. Pareto and all that.

9. Short but powerful replies. So you’ve chosen the few emails you’re actually going to respond to … now don’t blow it by writing a novel-length response to each one. I limit myself to five sentences for each reply (at the maximum — many replies are even shorter). That forces me to be concise, to choose only the essentials of what I want to say, and limits the time I spend replying to email. Keep them short, but powerful.

10. Process to done. When you open your inbox, process to it to done. Don’t just look at an email and leave it sitting in your inbox. Get it out of there, and empty that inbox. Make it a rule: don’t leave the inbox with emails hanging around. Empty and clean. Ahhh!