From Laura’s Desk – 29 March 2017

Quote of the Week

“There are two kinds of people: 1) Inbox (0) and 2) Inbox (32,314)”

Musings

I want to tell you a story about a method of working. Jane has an inbox. People come by and put things on top of the pile that is in the inbox. Jane works hard to get the inbox empty, but that doesn’t happen often. She does have a method, though.

Jane pulls the top item out of the inbox and considers it. What does she need to do with it? She decides that she has to wait for another piece of information, and puts it aside. She grabs the next piece. It’s an invoice, so she turns to the computer and pulls up the three programs she uses to process invoices. Then she grabs the next item from the inbox. It needs to be filed, so she walks over to the department filing cabinet and files it.

She picks up the top item in her inbox. She’s waiting for an answer on this in her email, so she turns and checks her email. No answer, so she puts it aside.

Then Jane’s boss walks by. Julie wants to know what the project requirement that was sent earlier in the week was for…Jane hasn’t filed it. So Jane digs through her inbox and finds it. But instead of doing anything with it when Julie walks away, Jane puts it back in the inbox.

This keeps on. Jane gets about halfway through the stack before the end of the day. At that point she puts all those things she is waiting for answers on back on top of the inbox for tomorrow.

That would be a crazy way to work, wouldn’t it? It would make much more sense if Jane were to pull everything out of the inbox, and group it by what needs to be done. Then she batch enter the invoices. She could keep the things she is waiting for out of the inbox and not have to go through them every day.

It would be much more efficient if Jane didn’t work from her inbox.

And it may seem crazy way to operate a physical inbox…

…yet it’s the way most people treat their email inboxes.

Do not work from your inbox. Not physical, not email.

Want more details on how to do this? Check out my Taming The Email Dragon course.

That’s about it for this week’s edition. We’ll see what next week brings. Until then, be productive, be peaceful, and keep your balance.