Getting Things Done
David Allen, in Getting Things Done, has lots of very useful tips on how to keep on top of all the things that need to be done. I don't think you need to adopt his method in an all-or-nothing way, although if taken as a whole approach there is a consistency that lends itself. Even then, you have to work out how you will put the principles into practice.
I've found his approach to be pretty good, and I've adopted most of it. One of his key principles is that "stuff" comes at you that needs to be handled. This can range from anything to an incoming e-mail, to an answerphone message, to something someone says to you in the street, a letter through the post, an idea you want to develop and so on. As Marc Lloyd recently pointed out in his helpful summary blog post, it even extends to a mug whose handle suddenly needs fixing.
Allen's point is that you need to collect all of this stuff that needs to be done - and it needs to go somewhere other than your brain. Trying to carry in your head a list of everything you need to do is going to be very stressful and things will be forgotten. You can have several in "buckets" - an in-tray, a box, a notepad for things when you're out and about and so on. And then, at some point (fairly frequently) you sort through your in-buckets. Some things can be done in under two minutes - get it out of the way. Other things take longer, so you put it on the right list for later. Other things can be delegated to someone else. "Do... Defer... Delegate". There's a lot more to say here, but not now.
E-mail as an in-bucket
But you have to work out how to implement this, and one "in bucket" is your e-mail inbox. How are you going to handle that?
One key principle I work to is that my inbox should be empty. It's just the in-bucket. Once I open an item, I'll either do it, defer it, or delegate it. Either way, it doesn't stay in the inbox after that point.
Productivity Tip
Now to get to what I've recently learnt: E-mail doesn't have to hit your inbox the minute someone sends it to you.
Don't Read It!
I use Microsoft Outlook to read my e-mail. Other people use other software, or webmail, or their smartphone, or whatever. All of these tools will, by default, try and retrieve your e-mail the minute it is sent to you, and then put it in your inbox. (Webmail likes to be left open in your web-browser where it will auto-refresh every two minutes). Outlook will even sound an audible alarm and put an icon in the Windows notification area every time there's a new message. Thanks.
But your inbox is your in-bucket. At some point you will look through it, and Do, Defer or Delegate everything in there. But you don't have to do that the minute the message arrives. You don't have to interrupt the e-mail you were writing, the phone call you were about to make, the sermon you were preparing to do that. Therefore, it doesn't have to hit your inbox the minute it was sent either. It can stay on the mailserver until you are ready to look through your inbox.
... at least, not yet!
For most of us, you'd need to check this several times a day. But why have the distraction of "you've got a new message" popping up? Why have the distraction of knowing you have 6 messages in your inbox that you haven't read yet? Why not just wait? Set your e-mail client to retrieve messages when you ask it to. Then, whenever you're between activities, hit the "Send / Receive" button, and quickly sift through what arrives. That way, you find the balance between retrieving often enough that you don't miss anything critical, and yet infrequently enough to let you get some things done in between. But either way: You are in control.
It works well. It also means that, on my day off, if I want to use my computer for something that is not related to work, I can do so without being distracted by e-mails sitting there that I shouldn't be looking at.
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