Nuke your inbox
I’ve been known for a long time to be an inbox clean freak. Sometime in the last year I finally got around to reading Getting Things Done by David Allen (colloquially known as GTD). That pushed me into a new level of inbox cleanliness to what you might call Inbox Zero. The link there is a Google Tech Talk by Merlin Mann, creator of the 43 folders web site. If you’re interested in living with an empty inbox, I can highly recommend this video as an inspiration and lots of practical advice in getting there.
The presentation itself is great but the questions and his answers afterward are equally illuminating, so make sure to watch the whole thing:
Also mentioned in the video is a web site called sentenc.es that espouses a philosophy of treating email like text messaging and only replying to emails in small set number of sentences, with a short note at the end referring to the site:
Q: Why is this email 5 sentences or less?
A: http://five.sentenc.es
You can find more from creator Mike Davidson.
Personally, I’m not willing to go quite this far, but I appreciate the sentiment. It certainly resonates well with the Miller Principle.
Nuke your inbox! Trust me, it feels good.
Hi! My name is Alex Miller and I live in St. Louis. I write code for a living and currently work for 
Hi, Alex,
In MS, they call this ZEB, Zero Email Bounce. I learned that while I was there for a couple of years. I’ve heard about GTD for years, but I’ve never gotten around to reading it :(
Good luck to you — life is considerably simpler with an empty inbox :)
bab
I have five messages in my inbox at the moment. I owe it all to the fact that I’m switching teams next week so I can safely ignore 90% of the e-mails that come my way :) What a great feeling!
The moral is – switch jobs as soon as you’ve been in one place long enough that:
* you’re on people’s radar
* there are actual expectations of you
My career goal now is to perpetually be The New Guy, with the lowered expectations that come along with that.
Alex,
Here’s my take on “clean” inboxes – http://tghaus.blogspot.com/2007/07/gtd-another-way-to-have-clean-inbox.html
Basically, while I completely subscribe to the clean inbox philosophy, I differ quite dramatically in the implementation.
Let me know what you think…
Taylor, I think that sounds like a reasonable approach. I think the important thing is to find what works for you so that you control your inbox and it doesn’t control you. Personally, the clean *inbox* is a psychological thing for me. Sounds like you’re at the same place, just through a different process and that still sounds right to me.