Perhaps you have heard of an organizational expert named David Allen. Over the years, Allen has helped many people organize their time, their tasks and — perhaps most important — their email inboxes with a method he calls, "Getting Things Done," or GTD, for short.
GTD followers are many and passionate. They fastidiously create folders and labels — both physical and digital — in dozens of categories, then file every piece of information promptly. Allen's book "Getting Things Done" has sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and people pay hundreds of dollars to hear him speak.
But the problem with a lot of organizational systems is that they replace one anxiety ("My stuff's not organized") with another ("My stuff's not organized according to this specific system").
Not to get too Zen here, but maybe the best system is no system. Or, put another way, the best system requires the least behavior modification. A few small habits may have to be adopted, but nothing as rigorous as GTD. The reason is quite simple really. Technology can do much of the work by automating certain organizational tasks.
I have a simple five-step system. And since no system is anything until it has initials, I've decided to call mine LTG: Letting Things Go. Here's how to do it.
1. Stop organizing, start searching.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by email folders and labels. Those tools held so much promise: They were rational ways to divide your email into logical chunks.
But their upkeep could be their undoing. What if one message did not get placed in the right folder? What if a message was not archived properly and disappeared in a routine purge of email data? Maintaining a label or folder regimen requires constant and furious vigilance. Fortunately, technology has rendered folders and labels, if not useless, severely diminished in their importance and promise.
When you are looking for something, you are often looking for one thing: a flight confirmation number, an invitation to dinner, a bank statement. Almost all email programs and operating systems now have a powerful search feature that can pull up any message that contains the word, number or phrase you are looking for. Windows 7's universal search will find any email stored on your computer; so will Mac OS X's Spotlight. All of the major Web mail services will allow you to find a message based on sender, subject or body text.
Keeping a folder may be a good idea in a few cases — when you have emails related to a specific long-term project like family vacations, home renovations or employees who need to be closely watched.
Side note: Bear in mind that the search solution will not work as well for email stored on your smartphone. If you are an iPhone user, for example, Apple's mail app lets you search only what is in the "to," "from" and "subject" fields. What is in the body of the email remains unknown. If you are using a Web mail provider like Gmail, you can search for words in the body by using the Google app or navigating to the mobile site.
2. Be ruthless about blocking.
You can make email organization exponentially easier if you reduce the amount of unwanted email you receive in the first place. To that end, consider "block sender" your brutish but loyal sidekick in this continuing battle.
Obviously, spammers should be mercilessly blocked, but why stop there? Even legitimate people and institutions can be blocked — and should. Catalog merchants? Blocked. Political groups that are still emailing after the election/referendum? Blocked. The Wired editor Chris Anderson once famously posted the email addresses of publicists he blocked because they blindly sent him pitches. It was a staggeringly long list of legitimate public relations people who were probably crushed to learn that the editor of Wired had not read their pitches in years. Sufferers of clogged inboxes should hang a picture of Anderson beside their monitors.
Would it be more humane to unsubscribe from various email lists or change settings on certain sites? Probably, but that takes more time, and why should you be considerate of some site or person that decided to pelt you with detritus?
One other thought: Use the right in-box for the right message. These days, we often have more than one inbox — and not just work and personal email accounts. Facebook has an inbox, as do Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and other services.
In most cases, these other inboxes can email you when they receive a message or something else happens to your account. I prefer to turn those alerts off and keep these messages on the sites they apply to. Getting an email saying "Joe Smith tagged you in a photo!" or "Jane Jones retweeted one of your tweets" needlessly clogs your inbox since you can visit those sites and get that message in their natural habitat.
3. Build a digital nag.
An inbox is often more than just a place to look at messages. It can be a to-do list too. The most basic version of this is when people email themselves with a reminder or task.
But what about messages from other people? You may get a note from someone that you want to follow up on, but just not now. If you let it sit in your inbox, you run the risk that new messages will push it so far down the list that you will not see it and forget about it.
Fortunately, there are sites and plug-ins that can manage your email and make it reappear at the top of your in-box at a specified date. Services like Nudgemail, Followup, Followupthen and Boomerang allow you to schedule a message to reappear as new in your in-box later. Basically, you forward the message to yourself with a time delay — from an hour to weeks or months.
4. Use your inbox as an address book.
Save yourself the time and trouble of lovingly and carefully compiling an address book. If you can save all your emails, you will have a searchable database of everyone who has ever emailed you. If you use Outlook, consider adding a plug-in like Xobni, which can automate address book tasks every time you receive an email.
The next time you need to contact someone, just search for the person's name. Don't know the name? Search for the person's company's name or the domain of the company.
A nice side effect to this system (besides the fact that you do not have to maintain an address book) is that it is naturally up to date. You will see the most recent email you received from that person. This is helpful because people switch jobs and email services, but you may not have updated your contacts list.
And when you have completed these tasks, there is one more you must undertake:
5. Make your peace.
This system is not bulletproof. No system is. Part of living with email is knowing that there is a lot of it and there always will be. So relax. Don't beat yourself up about it. Think of Reinhold Niebuhr's Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change/Courage to change the things I can/And wisdom to know the difference.
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