“Why should I go to all the trouble to empty my email inbox?”
This is a question that I am sometimes asked during the Efficient Librarian seminars. On the surface, all this fussing about with the “action” and “waiting for” folders seem like extra work, especially when the inbox is overflowing. Participants want assurances that working towards Inbox Zero is not a futile endeavor.
I believe that the labor needed to reach Inbox Zero, as popularized by Merlin Mann, is exceeded by the rewards. Off the top of my head, here are three reasons to live at Inbox Zero:
- An empty inbox clears the mind from reprocessing older messages to determine their value every time the inbox is viewed. The functional folders like “action” provide clarity and ease to workflow.
- Achieving Inbox Zero means that you are caught up on new input. This signals to the mind that it can move from processing to acting without worry that something important was missed.
- Emptying the inbox is a well-earned and clearly defined win. In the game of knowledge work we need to craft all the wins we can find. Inbox Zero is a win that renews constantly!
If you have never seen your email inbox at zero, I challenge you to dig down and empty it out. I expect it will be a victory you will savoir. If you don’t believe me, listen to librarian Patrick Hoecherl of the Salt Lake City Library. Upon reaching Inbox Zero last week he wrote to report that, “It feels even better than I thought it would!” So go ahead, take the Inbox Zero challenge!
“I understand the resistance to to-do lists, and the complaints about keeping them. I’ve noticed a couple of reasons for this. The main one is that most to-do lists are incomplete lists of still un-clarified “stuff.” Looking at them creates as much stress as they might have relieved in the first place. Typically, what people have on their lists (if they have them at all) are things like “Mom,” and “bank,” and “marketing VP.” It’s great that they have captured something that has their attention, but there are still critical decisions to make with some critical thinking about that content.”
For most people cleaning and tidying mean the same thing. Both are about bringing order to a space. However, there is a subtle but important difference between the words that can be transformational. In fact, it is not possible to clean successfully without tidying first!
Living in Florida means that I occasionally visit Disney World. If you have been to a Disney park, there is something that you might not have noticed, mostly because it is not there – TRASH! Disney parks are kept to a very high cleanliness standard. Walt Disney himself observed that if trash is left accumulate, it will quickly sour the experience. He figured out that by 
“You spend a quarter of your life at work, so shouldn’t you enjoy it? Organizational psychologist Adam Grant takes you inside some of the world’s most unusual workplaces to discover the keys to better work. Whether you’re learning how to love criticism or trust a co-worker you can’t stand, one thing’s for sure: You’ll never see your job the same way again.”
“Imagine for a moment the perfect organizational system. One that supported and enhanced the work you do, telling you exactly where to put a piece of information, and exactly where to find it when you needed it. … I believe I’ve developed a system for organizing digital information that meets all these requirements. After several years of introducing it to a wide variety of people, I’m confident that it works. In this post I will attempt to show you how.”
Charles Duhigg is a best selling author of two great books on productivity and efficiency: 
“Physical organization has a huge impact on how we work. For example, I have a habit of taking the pile of paper on my desk and cleaning it out before I work. When my physical surrounding is organized, I feel like my thinking is organized as well. Some people say they find that when they are doing creative work, some clutter on the desk can make them feel more productive. There is no one set way to be productive at work – the physical space primarily works as a cue to a habit, like getting to work in a productive mindset.”
Physical actions are visible to other people such as calling someone on the phone, typing an email, drafting a memo, or talking to a colleague. A common trap is to believe that “thinking” about an item is a next action. Thinking could be part of a next action if that process is accompanied by a physical movement to capture the ideas, such as drawing a mind map.
book that provides an answer to this dilemma. In 
Efficient Librarian 