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Handling a lot of email efficiently

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People love sending email at Microsoft. So you need a good strategy to handle it. At work I use a strategy similar to what is described here. My key principle is that the inbox should only contain things I need to address. If I cannot address it in a few days I archive it flag it so it ends up in my task to-do list in outlook. And that list is kept shorter than 10 items at all times. preferably it is empty when I go home every day. OK, that does not happen very often but my to-do list is usually shorter than 5.

But I've not been that good at keeping my gmail inbox clean. Currently I have 155 mail threads in my gmail inbox. Which is way too much for my taste. Didn't really think a lot about it before, but after reading this I realized it is time to clean my gmail inbox because there should be no difference between my work and private life. And I love the analogy between email inbox and Kanban! And I used to have gmail set for 25 so tonight I'm starting to clean up my gmail inbox too...

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2010
    Inbox down to 14 now. Feels good.