diederik
7 April 2008
Inbox is no to-do list
Posted in Efficient emailThe arrival of email has opened up a new communication channel that can be extremely efficient. Actually sometimes too efficient. It can take 30 seconds to write an email that means hours of work on the receiving side. This, together with the sheer volume of work-related emails that scientists tend to receive, can provoke a lot of stress.
Scientists (like myself) often struggle to organize themselves properly. It is then very tempting to use your inbox as a to-do list. The messages in your inbox are often connected to tasks, and you can simply leave them in the inbox until you have dealt with them. Most of my colleagues work this way.
THIS IS THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY OF ORGANIZING YOURSELF! It means namely that your daily work becomes dictated by the messages that you receive. This means that, in the end, others run your daily schedule instead of yourself! What you should do, instead, is make a proper (electronic or paper) personal organizer. This can be extremely simple and contain a task list including priorities and deadlines. You decide then yourself which part of the incoming email ends up one your task list and in which form.
The only exception are emails that can be dealt with instantly, which means within a few minutes. Your general rule should be that no mail can remain in your inbox for more then 5 minutes after you have read it. That means either you deal with it immediately (e.g. reply of a few lines), or save the mail elsewhere in your email directories and, if necessary, decide to create an input in your organizer or edit a previous input.
In filtering your tasks, make sure you give the highest priorities to tasks that you like to do and that are really important. In my case these are all the emails connected to scientific discussions. I therefore make sure that any interesting scientific mails end up high on my priority list. The risk is otherwise that you drown in boring admin stuff and forget what you were doing in the first place, namely science.
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7 May 2008 9:35, tini_camp
I am amused by the fact that in (old versions ) of the Presentation Guide, Writing Guide and Email Guide usage of capitals and exclamation marks is strongly discouraged. The author (AL) claims that this has a highly patronizing effect.
11 May 2008 9:20, Charl Botha
I very much agree with your sentiment!
This is more or less also propagated by Dave Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) cult^H^H^H^Hbook: incoming emails that can be taken care of in under 2 minutes should be dealt with immediately, the rest should be deleted, delegated or processed into next actions for various contextualised todo-lists.
30 Jan 2009 16:35, Johnny DJ
I disagree with the premise that the email Inbox should not be used as a to-do list. I follow the logic of David Allen’s GTD system, and I agree that incoming messages need to be dealt with in 2 minutes or less. However, my spin on the system is that I immediately categorize any incoming messages that can’t be dealt with right away, but I leave them in my inbox until they are completed. I’ve tried all sorts of folder arrangements, but I’ve found that once a message leaves my inbox, it is out of sight and out of mind. Dutifully transferring messages to formal to-do lists and then transferring them back when completed just takes too long and takes too much discipline.
My Mailbox Folder Hierarchy is as follows:
– Inbox
—– Archive
—– Travel
—– Reference
—– Mailing-Lists
– The Inbox is for new messages and action items.
– The Archive is for messages that don’t have any action items related to them. I archive every message at some point. I use Google Desktop to index and quickly search for messages.
– The Travel folder is for near future travel reservation records.
– The Reference folder is for messages that contain information that I need to reference quickly and/or often.
– The Mailing Lists folder is for bulk messages that are not likely to generate an action item.
When I receive a message, I quickly evaluate if it is something that can be done in 2 minutes or less. If it can be done now, then I just do it and archive the message.
If the message is going to take longer than 2 minutes to complete, then I categorize it with as @Action_P1, @Action_P2, or @Action_P3. These categories are color coded Red, Orange, and Yellow so that I can quickly tell which items are the most important.
If the message gets delegated or requires action from someone else, I categorize it as @Waiting_For which is color coded blue, and I flag it and set a reminder.
Once a message has been read and has no more next actions associated with it, I move it to the Archive. My inbox typically has about 30 messages in it that all need to be dealt with. Everything else is neatly filed away for safe keeping.
– Johnny DJ
4 Feb 2009 18:04, Onno
I agree with the above. I use the GTD-plugin for Gmail and it really helps organising my todo’s. Also my Blackberry allows me to add actions to my todo’s and add a date and priority to them. I can synchronise these todo’s with my gmail todo’s using another plugin: Remember the Milk. Now I at one glance I can see what I need to do, and to which items the tasks are related. It’s perfect.