“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.”
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 
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.
Sometimes when we think about the effort it will take to get organized a negative reaction will arise. Is it really worth all the time and energy necessary to put things in their right spot? How about the constant practice of getting things out of your head – sounds like a pain! Can’t we just relax and have fun?
“Imagine if we had a learning curriculum for modern knowledge work.
“A typical question I get is, “What’s the one thing that we do that gets in the way of us being productive?” It’s not one thing, but five, all wrapped together: People keep stuff in their head. They don’t decide what they need to do about stuff they know they need to do something about. They don’t organize action reminders and support materials in functional categories. They don’t maintain and review a complete and objective inventory of their commitments. Then they waste energy and burn out, allowing their busy-ness to be driven by what’s latest and loudest, hoping it’s the right thing to do but never feeling the relief that it is.”
Do you know someone who has piles of papers stacked on their desk? Over time, these piles can spill out to neighboring chairs, tables, and even onto the floor. In such cases, it is safe to assume that this person’s filing system has stopped functioning.
free webinar this Tuesday afternoon, sponsored by the 
Efficient Librarian 