Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Inbox Zero: Half A Year in E-mails

I'm rearranging and deleting a ton of e-mail in my bid to get organized, build momentum and suppress the junk that comes to me.

This is part of Inbox Zero, an exercise designed to help you become less of a slave to e-mail and manage your time better. The thing is I always find emptying the inbox slightly depressing...friends who I wanted to send the perfect reply to and therefore never replied, opportunities for networking events I never opened, films screenings I skipped, e-Bay bids I didn't win, travel itineraries for the super expensive documentary. It's like a none-too-pleasant stroll down memory lane.

On the up side, I look at those thousands and thousands of e-mails and feel inspired to do better. Hit reply if I'm going to answer. Delete if I'm not. Deal quicker. Let go. Clean out and move up. Make space for all that good happy e-mail I'm going to get in this last quarter of the year. (Hey, a girl can dream, right?)

2 comments:

Julie Gray said...

I know what you mean, Claire - way back when I used to love getting emails. Now, each morning when I look at that inbox my stomach drops. I took one of those "organize your life" classes once and a great piece of advise is to schedule time to deal with your email two or three times a day ONLY. As much as my email overwhelms me, every time I hear that little chime that I have email, I HAVE to go look. Then I wind up wasting time scrolling through them all again. I never did take that great advice about limiting how often I check my email but it's something to aspire to!

Third World Girl said...

Yep. It's addictive. I live to hear that chime. For that split second before I check my mail, I fantasize about what awesome stuff has descended into my inbox... when it's in fact just Office Max telling me I get 30% off toner all week.
But some day, baby. Some day...