Inbox Zero from 43 Folders
Merlin Mann, a productivity expert of the highest caliber, and founder of the 43 Folders website, has a wonderful approach to dealing with the onslaught of email. Most professionals nowadays are faced with more than 100 email messages each day. Obviously spam factors into that count, but how many of us don’t spend more than one hour cumulatively dealing with email daily? The idea behind Mann’s Inbox Zero strategy is to keep the email inbox at zero - obviously easier said than done. The approach he takes and widely espouses is based upon the reigning scriptures of productivity, David Allen’s Getting Things Done. In a recent talk at Google, Mann presented this strategies for implementing the Inbox Zero system to some of the engineers. Below is the introduction to the series on 43 Folders, followed by the video of the Google presentation and links to the actual slides and then to the Inbox Zero series itself, for more information.
These are posts from a special 43 Folders series looking at the skills, tools, and attitude needed to empty your email inbox — and then keep it that way. You can visit each of the posts by clicking the title.
Update: Another productive individual, Michael Hyatt - President and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, provides some additional insight into the processing of email. A self-described “recovering email addict”, Hyatt recently took the advice of Tim Feriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, and took a radical, if not controversial approach to handling email. He only checks email twice per day. Read more about the success he has had with the experiment.
29 July 2007 | Business, General, Technology | Comments
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