Answer e-mail in time

I have started this Monday with answering all my old emails… which was a lot of work… and until now I am doing very well in answering new emails immediately. It’s a very good feeling to have an empty inbox!!! hope to keep it up :]

Un-procrastinating, de-stressing effect

I have been using the system in Do It Tomorrow and I am keeping up with email. I also got off a bunch of lists.

It is easy to be demotivated when e-mail I send never gets answered. Some people seem to think it is OK to leave the e-mail unanswered even when an answer or acknowledgement is in order.

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!

Distinguish reading email from processing email. When processing, don’t spend time on each email; just glance through each to see whether it’s something you want to read or respond to, otherwise delete it immediately. Move those you might want to read or respond to into another folder, which you then read in turn, as you have time. Make sure this folder doesn’t pile up.

I keep my 43 Things-list on the sidebar of my blog. Hence, every time I view it, I see my list of to-do’s. Hence, I’ve seen this item enough times to really make an effort to get rid of this pesky item, and I have. Now I seldom wait more than 10 hours before answering a personal e-mail.

At work I’m lightning. My private mail is another thing. If anybody can tip me of a lightweight e-mail client for Windows or Linux I’d turn happy. I’m not talking Outlook, Evolution, Eudora or something like that. Lightweight.