AI-generated image by DALL-E of a wood and paper inbox on a desk

There's nothing like coming back in the morning from a vacation where you worked really, really hard to not check work email for the entire time, only to be faced with a burgeoning inbox of unread messages. As you take a sip of your preferred work-safe beverage and put hands to the keyboard, you are likely thinking, where the hell do I start? Do I sort through those marked urgent (wait, most of them are) or sort by sender and start at the top of the food chain (but that requires recall of the org structure). What do you do?

For me, it's simple - I start with the last email in, at the top, and work my way down. So the last message in is the first out. Last-in, first-out, or as the accountants call it, LIFO.

The Reason for Whom to be Pleasing

I didn't always use this approach. Some of the approaches I mentioned are ones I have used over the years. When you get down to it, it's almost a no-win situation - someone's message won't get read as quickly as they want it to be read. With LIFO, someone is getting responded to quickly, and starting at the top of the list is also easier to manage. My ultimate goal for using LIFO is to get to inbox zero, something I always strive for.

With any process you choose for any task, it's always nice to have some validation for it. Initially I didn't tell anyone about my approach as I didn't want them to be slighted if their messages came in earlier during my out of office period. I got some reassurance of my choice from John C. Dvorak, the veteran technology journalist and co-host of the No Agenda podcast. During one episode he was talking about email and stated he uses LIFO for pretty much the same reasons I do. As he emails with pioneers in technology, I couldn't have a better endorsement.

How do you manage your inbox? Do you LIFO, first-in, first-out or FIFO? Or something else? I welcome your thoughts in the comments to this post. Of course now that my approach is out in the open, I expect more emails to be sent to me just as I return to work.

Deconstructing Last In First Out

Perfection can be the enemy of the good. When it comes to a digital stack of messages before you, choosing a method to process them that you are comfortable with is paramount. My choice of LIFO as a method has worked for me, and it still allows me to sort through my inbox to find, say, messages from my boss if needed.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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