Can’t seem to get a handle on your email inbox no matter how hard you try? This simple flow chart offers a set of rules designed to help you power through your inbox in no time.
(Click the image above for a closer look.)
From a post called Email and Focus and productivity blog How to Get Focused, the chart accompanies a long treatise on email and your relationship with your inbox, asking, for example, whether you’re an email farmer or email hunter (they recommend being a farmer). The whole post is worth a read (it actually does have some nice nuggets), but we particularly liked the simplicity of the flow chart above — which is relatively agnostic to whatever email system you use.
Got a different method of processing your inbox that conflicts with the flow chart? Let’s hear it in the comments.
Email and Focus [How to Get Focused]
This is basically the system advocated in Inbox Zero by Merlin Mann - see http://www.43folders.com/2007/07/25/merlins-inbox-zero-talk