Inbox Zero
Merlin Mann of 43Folders fame has a philosophy called Inbox zero. He gave this talk at the Google campus in July 2007. It's worth a listen, but if you don't have time, his advice boils down to dealing with your inbox everyday. Every mail gets one of 5 things done to it: Delete (or Archive) - Don't spend a lot of time on building archive folders. Use built-in search capabilities to find things Delegate (Forward to someone else) Respond (keep it short) - Appropriate response length is good. My comment is to put important content into the subject. Defer (Put into a pending folder) - something that you check periodically to see if it has resolved. I use flags in Outlook to keep track of my deferred actions Do or capture a placeholder for it (such as a calendar or a task) General principles: Do email less (unless of course your job is real-time) Do email on a schedule. Turn off mail arrival signals, then once per hour process it using the above five actions. Go back to work. Fi