Yesterday I took the day to get a monkey off my back – my email inbox. Yes, I spent a Sunday to process all of the email that has piled up over who knows how long. This could have been avoided if I followed the advice I gave to myself many years ago when I faced a similar situation on an almost daily basis – managing your email inbox to zero.

As the name implies, it means you will continuously work to have no emails in your inbox. So where will they go? The following is a list of actions that I apply to all of my inbox messages:

• Read
• Delete
• Forward
• File
• Act Upon

Note I don’t have “leave in there” as a valid action. With the capacity of mail folders on just about every type of email software, coupled with search, filing messages that need to be saved and processing the rest will get your inbox clutter in order.

In general, I do not neglect email. I do read it through the day and process most mail. Messages that are low priority or something not requiring immediate action are what tend to build up. But a few of these messages a day can add up quickly and thus here I am.

First Step – Low Hanging Fruit

As I sat down to process my inbox, I decided to go through every message first, looking for low-hanging fruit, which I determined as messages that could right-away be deleted or filed. If it took longer than a second to think about them, I would skip them for the full review.

This went well – I started with 100 messages in my inbox and after processing low-hanging fruit I ended up with 50! Not only did I feel a sense of accomplishment already, but some relief that I wouldn’t spend the entire day on email.

Process Them In Order

After I got my inbox to a manageable size, I decided to tackle them in the order of the most recent received, going in reverse. It was a Sunday, so this made sense, but if it was a weekday I might have wanted to process the oldest first. And I worked them one at a time – not tackling the next message until the current one was completed. After going through the low-hanging fruit, I had already cleared out redundant messages or reviewed those related to others, so I would not have been surprised by a second message related to the one I was currently working on.

Needless to say this took a while, and longer than my review for low-hanging fruit. I tried to act on as many of them as possible, especially if work was involved. For some, I added a task to my to-do list system and filed the email. There was a mix of actual client work, messages to reply to which required actual thought and email receipts among other things. After a few hours, my inbox was at zero, and all was right in the world.

It’s About Keeping It That Way

Ideally, my inbox should always be at zero. If there are any messages in there, they should be there for a brief period – no longer than a day or two – and almost serve as a poor-excuse-for-a task list. If it would take longer, I would add the task to my to-do list system, where it would be prioritized properly. The goal is to only have one list to work from, not two.

The Origin Of A Process

As I related earlier, this process was borne from necessity. Years back I worked for a large international company where email was flying from all directions. I would not be unusual for me to come into work at 8 am East Coast US time and have 400 new messages in my inbox! Granted many were related to each others as part of a message thread, but they still took time to process.

To make things worse, my manager left all of his email in his inbox! I realized this after a while when he would yell at me for not telling him something when I had already emailed him on it days ago. One time when in his office I noticed he had literally thousands of email in his inbox, most unread. It dawned on me the reality of this particular job was reading and filing email, and searching for it when called on the carpet, which happened all too frequently.

Everybody needs their own system for work. I share this as its something that has worked for me for over a decade, and when I have personally shared it with folks they have responded favorably to it.

Give it a try, and let me know what you think of it.

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Business • Technology • (5) Comments • Permalink

What H.G. Wells wrote about in 1895 has become a reality for me today. The notion of a time machine, which someone could use to travel to a specific time and location, is now possible. Thanks for this goes to Facebook.

Within the last month I have seen a huge number of my high school graduating class on Facebook. They may have been there all the long, and with the ability to search by when and where from you graduated, it has magnified their presence. That is, assuming, you tag yourself for when you graduated from high school. Many people are new to Facebook, some joining at the encouragements of friends… and for some by their own children.

As it’s been a few years since I graduated from high school, people have obviously changed. For example, I had a mop of hair on my head in high school! Others go by married or other names and some still have to upload photos or use a photo where you can actually make out a face. For those whom I have connected with, it’s been interesting catching up on what has transpired over the years. There’s also the occasional memory of each other that the other had no idea about or had repressed that sometimes comes to light.

The concept of a time machine has been omnipresent for me. For whatever reason, I never made it back to a high school reunion, and with the exception of a small handful of people, I haven’t seen or heard from most all of my graduating class. It wasn’t anything I did intentionally, it just happened.

But here we all are, and we’re catching up. I helped the cause by creating a Facebook group for my class as a signpost in the vastness of Facebook to connect people. This will surely make the next class reunion, slated for next year, different. Different, I believe, in a positive way.

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Diversions • Technology • (1) Comments • Permalink

The date for conversion of broadcast television in the US from analog to digital has changed to June 12, 2009. Originally it was set to next Tuesday, February 17, but at the last minute a bill moved through Congress to delay it. In short, if you don’t have the right equipment, you won’t be able to watch TV. As you can see from the accompanying photo of my TV from a recent test done by CBS2 in Chicago, I have the right stuff.

The idea behind delaying it was to give more time to people to get the right equipment. I won’t get into what “right equipment” is but you can check out DTVAnswers.com for more information. After watching endless promotions of the digital switch for almost forever, I say bring it on, right now, even sooner if possible! Why? Because no matter how long you wait, people still won’t catch on. If you don’t believe me, look at smoke detectors.

For as long as smoke detectors have been in existence, the daily news is riddled with stories of deaths in homes that were on fire and did not have smoke detectors at all, or non-functioning ones. Why? I have no idea. Other than the pure negligence, what causes someone to not spend US$10 on a device that saves lives? I have never heard of anyone denying the merits of smoke detectors, yet people still don’t have them.

After fires ravage a home and people in Chicago, firefighters canvas the neighborhood handing out free smoke detectors. Maybe TV station employees should do the same, checking if people have the right equipment and if not handing out converter boxes. Either that or run digital tests during American Idol or Survivor and not during the morning news, as its obvious with the extension the media has failed to get the message across to everyone.

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Business • (6) Comments • Permalink

The next likemind will be Friday, February 20, 2009 in dozens of cities around the world.

In Chicago, it will be at Spa Cafe, 112 W. Monroe, between Clark and LaSalle Streets in the Loop at 8:00 am. Check out the Spa Cafe Web site for more information, and you can find your way with a Google Map to Spa Cafe here.

I call likemind a gathering of creative-minded people, from various disciplines including Internet, advertising, art, social media, et. al.

No RSVP is required. You are also welcome to join the likemind Chicago Facebook group.

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Announcements • Business • (4) Comments • Permalink

Where all of the attention yesterday was on Punxsutawney Phil and the fact he saw his shadow, I looked a little further north from the Pennsylvania town for my prognostication. On the shore of Lake Erie lies Dunkirk, New York, where a groundhog by the name of Dunkirk Dave resides.

Where Phil saw his shadow, implying a longer winter, Dave did not see his shadow, meaning an early spring. With all of the snow I have faced personally in Chicago as well as what friends, family and clients have endured from the left to right coasts of America, I think we can all go for a little less winter and some warmer, bearable temperatures.

So once again my hat goes off to Dunkirk Dave. Well, for now my hat will stay on and cover my head until it is warm enough to expose my bald pate to the elements. And as you may have guessed, Dave’s hometown is also my hometown, and thus the name of my little Internet consulting firm!

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Diversions • (1) Comments • Permalink