Comments on: Inbox Zero: Inbox Down to 50 http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/7135 Feel Smart Again Sun, 8 Nov 2009 15:56:41 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 hourly 1 By: margot http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/7135/comment-page-1#comment-19509 margot Fri, 03 Aug 2007 14:54:56 +0000 http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/7135#comment-19509 Another take on the subject I just finished Mark Hurst's book "Bit Literacy" Not only is my in box empty - read and delete, answer, file ToDo - he has some excellent ideas on managing the rest of the stuff on your HD - file naming, systems, etc. Another take on the subject I just finished Mark Hurst’s book “Bit Literacy”
Not only is my in box empty – read and delete, answer, file ToDo – he has some excellent ideas on managing the rest of the stuff on your HD – file naming, systems, etc.

]]> By: Anad http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/7135/comment-page-1#comment-19424 Anad Thu, 02 Aug 2007 21:47:17 +0000 http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/7135#comment-19424 I was skeptical about potentially wasting an hour watching a video about how to be more productive, and he probably could have done the same presentation in 20 minutes (okay, I'm not from California)...but, it really is worth it. I immediately logged in to my office machine and reorganized my entire system. I installed a timer program that opens my mail software 4 times daily. The system works beautifully. It's been a week and I have yet to have a dozen unassigned messages. Most importantly I can concentrate on my job as a medical writing rather than reacting to needy correspondents. Part of the system is giving yourself permission to do 2 things--delete stuff and write replies in less than 5 sentences. I was skeptical about potentially wasting an hour watching a video about how to be more productive, and he probably could have done the same presentation in 20 minutes (okay, I’m not from California)…but, it really is worth it.

I immediately logged in to my office machine and reorganized my entire system. I installed a timer program that opens my mail software 4 times daily. The system works beautifully. It’s been a week and I have yet to have a dozen unassigned messages. Most importantly I can concentrate on my job as a medical writing rather than reacting to needy correspondents.

Part of the system is giving yourself permission to do 2 things–delete stuff and write replies in less than 5 sentences.

]]> By: Jared http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/7135/comment-page-1#comment-19413 Jared Thu, 02 Aug 2007 19:08:23 +0000 http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/7135#comment-19413 i work for a medium sized company with a rather large number of clients and a slowly growing support team. on average we'll get 300-400 emails a day for various things, so email management is very important to us. i've found that Outlook 2007 has some wonderful tools to help with this sort of thing. simply the ability to have a Task Window (flagged emails) appearing in your main Outlook pane is a tremendous help. when i sort through the hundreds of emails we get whenever i see something that needs my attention i flag it and move on. then when i'm done i go through that list and go over things again. if it's something i can take care of right then, i will, if not i will enter a task in our ticketing system. the point is, sometimes a well thought out tool will help you just as much as crafting your own system. integrating these tools into your own system is probably a great idea too :) i work for a medium sized company with a rather large number of clients and a slowly growing support team. on average we’ll get 300-400 emails a day for various things, so email management is very important to us.
i’ve found that Outlook 2007 has some wonderful tools to help with this sort of thing. simply the ability to have a Task Window (flagged emails) appearing in your main Outlook pane is a tremendous help. when i sort through the hundreds of emails we get whenever i see something that needs my attention i flag it and move on. then when i’m done i go through that list and go over things again. if it’s something i can take care of right then, i will, if not i will enter a task in our ticketing system.
the point is, sometimes a well thought out tool will help you just as much as crafting your own system. integrating these tools into your own system is probably a great idea too :)

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