Back to Basics: Your Inbox
This is the first post in an ongoing series I’m calling “back to Basics”, a “refresher course” in personal productivity. For people just starting to grapple with issues of productivity, it will serve as an introduction to the basic concepts that underlie much of what we write here at Lifehack. For more advanced readers, it will serve as a reminder of what you thought you were setting out to do before you started fiddling with your system.
I’m not sure how long the series will be – I intend to keep going until a) I run out of topics to cover, or b) people start asking me to stop. :-)
Your Inbox
We start, then, where most productivity systems start: your inbox. By “inbox”, I don’t necessarily mean one of those plastic or wooden trays you set on your desk and pile everything into; that’s one kind of inbox, but not the only kind. Basically, an inbox is any place where you collect inputs into your life for later processing, whether those inputs are information, correspondence, notes, unfinished work, things you intend to look at later, or whatever.
An inbox, then, can be a tray in your office, a table by your front door, a notebook you carry in your purse or pocket, or a pocket in your shoulder bag. We also have “virtual” inboxes: your email program, your RSS reader, note-organizing apps like Evernote, even a text or word processing file you keep open on your desktop. And don’t forget your computer monitor – if you’re one of those people who covers their monitor with post-its, that, too, is an inbox.
The Fewer, the Better
As a general rule, the fewer inboxes you have, the better. Fewer inboxes means less places where important material can escape your notice, and also less time to process everything you need out of them.
As a practical matter, your inboxes should be treated as end-points, with all your various inputs funneling towards them. As I said, this assures that everything eventually gets put in a place where you’re going to pay some attention to it.
With more and more of us using online web applications, it’s becoming quite easy to make sure your digital inputs end up in a single place. Most services will allow you to send things easily to your email, and you can set up rules to automatically forward stuff where it needs to end up, thus automating some of the processing of your inbox. For example, you could have all emails with attachments forwarded automatically to your Google Docs account so you can access them and even edit them from just about anywhere (that’s assuming you don’t regularly receive documents whose value you need to ascertain before deciding what you need to do with it).
For physical inputs, make sure everyone knows where to put things that they want you to see and do something about – mail, documents to review, research material, whatever. At work, this tends not to be so difficult; at home it will be another story! You’ll help make sure that your chosen inbox is seen as a place to put things that need action if you regularly process it’s contents so that it doesn’t become a place where inputs go to be forgotten.
And make sure you set an example by using your inbox yourself! When you’re away from your desk or from home, keep a notebook or pack of index cards with you and jot notes, appointments, numbers, etc. down as they come to you. When you get to your inbox, drop it in and process it according to your normal schedule. If you don’t make good use of your inbox, nobody else will.
An Inbox Alone Isn’t Productive
It’s important that your inboxes not be treated as final destinations! An inbox is only useful as a place to collect everything that’s important, to get it out of your head so that you can do something with it. Inboxes that just keep filling up are worse than useless; not only do they not help you do the things that are important enough to you to end up in your inbox, but they soon overflow and leave you in search of a new inbox to fill with all your new important stuff. All the while you get further and further behind…
Set up an inbox-cleaning routine that fits your workstyle and the rate at which it fills. While you don’t want to let it fill to overflowing, you also don’t want to feel compelled to process everything the moment it hits your inbox. The point of your inbox is to help you manage your inputs, not to allow your inputs to manage you!
Next Time: Processing Your Inbox
In the next “Back to Basics” post, we’ll look at ways of processing the material that ends up in your inboxes. While it might take some effort and discipline to make sure your inboxes are used effectively, maintaining an inbox is a largely passive affair: stuff keeps filling your inbox whether you do anything or not. Processing is the first part of doing, where you start making active decisions about what to do with each item in your inbox.
Do you have any useful tips to help your fellow readers channel all their inputs into one place? Let us know in the comments!
WRITER'S BIOGRAPHY
Dustin Wax
Dustin M. Wax is a freelance writer and project manager at Stepcase Lifehack. He can be reached though his freelancing site at DustinWax.comDon't Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College.
Follow him on Twitter: @dwax.
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Comments
Timuche says on June 20th, 2008 at 10:50 am
« Set up an inbox-cleaning routine that fits your workstyle and the rate at which it fills. »
Do you plan to explain how you can accomplish that ?
Dustin Wax says on June 20th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Timuche: Yes, roughly. The next post will be about processing stuff out of your inbox. But only you can know what the level of inputs is into your own inbox. For instance, I ahve a mailbox at the uni where I teach, which is technically an inbox — but I rarely get anything in it, since I’ve forbidden students to hand in work to the department and I don’t use the dept. as a mainling lsit for much. So I process that inboxx only every couple weeks. On the other hand, I get a ton of email every day, most of it something I need to either respond to or do something about. If I don’t process that inbox *at least* every day — and usually 3 times a day — I miss time-sensitive stuff (like someone having a problem with the site, where if I can’t fix it, we lose readers).
Shanel Yang says on June 20th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
This series should be interesting! I’m always looking for ways to improve my information systems. Can’t wait for the second installment!
Duff says on June 20th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Thanks Dustin for this back-to-basics series!
Here are some things I’ve found useful for inboxes:
One email inbox, if at all possible.
One physical inbox for all papers. No stacking things!
One “ubiquitous capture,” if at all possible. Don’t fall into the trap of using several pads of paper and Jott.com and voice notes on your phone and…. When you have an idea, know the one best way to capture it, and use that.
For people who hate voicemail but are good with processing email, consider http://Callwave.com, a voice-to-text service.
Develop the discipline of processing inboxes, one inbox at a time. Perhaps I’m a slow learner, but it took me several months to get the daily inbox 0 habit for my email. I’m still working on this habit for my physical inbox. But by taking one at a time it’s doable.
TexasEx94 says on June 20th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
As someone who is trying to renew my commitment to becoming more productive again, I seem to have stumbled on potentially a good refresher. Looking forward to reading more.
Charlie Gilkey | Productive Flourishing says on June 21st, 2008 at 8:47 am
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I’m really glad you qualified this with “as a general rule,” because I’ve learned that it really sometimes depends on context. As chaotic as it sounds, I actually have six physical inboxes – but it’s because I pre-sort where the information needs to go by what it’s about. I have a discussion on that here: http://www.productiveflourishi.....ve-motion/.
I look forward to reading this series as it progresses – we’re at that point where we need to recover the basics for the third (fourth?) wave of productivity seekers.
Great work, Dustin.
Charlie Gilkey | Productive Flourishing says on June 21st, 2008 at 8:49 am
The “this” I was just referring to was “fewer inboxes means less places where important material can escape your notice, and also less time to process everything you need out of them.” Operator error by using brackets – sorry about that.
Dustin Wax says on June 21st, 2008 at 11:03 am
Charles, that’s exacty why I qualified the statement. You should have as few inboxes as you can live with — but no fewer.
Duff: I somewhat disagree on ubiquitous capture (which I’ll probably do a Back to Basics” on, too) — if everything’s going to end up in Evernote (say), then by all means Jott, text, etmail, whatever back to Evernote when you can, *and* keep that Moleskine with you to write notes in — notes that you will eventually transcribe into Evernote. While it might be “Crossing the streams” to have an app for both inbox and reference, as long as you’re processing stuff out of the inbox part, I don’t see that as too confusing. And as someone who gets lots of ideas on the road, I’m willing to risk a little confusion more than risk a little 6-car pileup as I fumble to write in my Moleskine.
Summy says on June 21st, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Agreed that you should minimize inboxes.
I hope you conclude that the the inbox should be empty.
Let’s Fight: Why Don’t You Keep Your Inbox Empty?
etavitom says on June 22nd, 2008 at 6:55 pm
extremely helpful and sure to save me hours of time. most appreciate!!!
DrCris says on June 22nd, 2008 at 10:11 pm
I am looking forward to this. I have inbox issues. My problem is I have a number of different “hats”. I only have one wallet, and one computer, but I have three physical desks. It means that I have trouble keeping on top of my physcal inboxes. As I am not always at my work desk, for example, that one gets clagged and I don’t keep it as clean. Or when I am workign alot, then my home inbox dosn’t get purged.
I hope you are going to give some help on how to deal with these sorts of issues.
I am looking forward to the series.
Timuche says on June 23rd, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Ok^^ Thank you.
multitaskingmama says on June 23rd, 2008 at 4:30 pm
No matter how many inboxes you have (and keeping it to the minimum is definitely advisable) keeping up with your inboxes is important but so are boundaries as someone else mentioned earlier. It is so easy to become distracted by answering emails and reading all your RSS feeds and forgetting that you have a deadline or need to get to a meeting.
I also agree with Duff that you need to have one way that you “keep notes” whether they are handwritten or jott.com or in your palm. Too many sticky notes and you will be sure to miss something important.
Organizing your inbox is easily accomplished with the Foresight product- http://www.enhanceyouroutlook.com.
Thanks for the info Dustin- it is important to go back to the basics every once in a while!!
Ann at One Bag Nation says on June 24th, 2008 at 1:32 am
I have just one physical inbox – for bills, etc. – that I process once a week. I also keep a small notepad in the car and by my bed to jot down everything from blog post ideas to tasks I need to do.
I have a photo of my inbox on my blog; I decided to use something attractive where I couldn’t see the stuff (like you can in a wire basket) until I was ready to deal with it.
Ellen Hart says on July 14th, 2008 at 9:03 am
I’ve found that the way to avoid clutter and to maximize productivity is to sort my inbox on a regular schedule. I have “sorting appointments” etched in stone on my calendar for both my physical inbox and the electronic version.
Sergej says on October 15th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
I have a lot of papers to read. Do you think it is a good idea to read them during the inbox processing, or not put them into inbox before I read them and mark up with some notes?
Thanks
Vincent says on November 3rd, 2008 at 12:45 pm
I think I would need to make some effort to deal with my inbox. Getting a little messy over here.
Cheers
Vincent
Personal Development Blogger