John’s Reviews

I have been very successful lately with my effort to keep my inbox empty. This effort started about a year ago with my first awareness of the term Getting things done and the book by David Allen.

The concept is to work your inbox efficiently until it is empty. This means deleting things that you don’t need (and deciding that quickly), filing items away as reference (if it is information that you may need later), doing the task that the item represents (request from someone) and then either filing it or deleting it, delegating it to someone to take care of (and filing it in a waiting for list), or deciding to work on it later (by creating a task or project for it in your tasks or projects list).

This does require that some other habits exist. You need to work your tasks and projects list. If you don’t work these lists and do the tasks and projects that are listed there, then adding an item to the list doesn’t help you. You also need to keep track of your delegated tasks to make sure they are done. Doing this will ensure that people that you delegate to know that you are serious about them completing the tasks.

That’s it. I try to not make it more complicated than that. What about priorities? What about goals? What about values? Yes, those things are important. They are part of the internal decision making process that helps me decide what to do on my lists. I do actively manage those, but not at the same day-to-day level as my inbox and tasks.

Get the book. One of the more powerful messages is that we don’t manage time, we manage what we do. Time management and goals management is all about deciding what to do, what actions to take. Taking my inbox to empty allows me to get the best picture of what I still need to do and then doing the best possible task next.