Inbox Zero – where art thou?
I was doing pretty well for awhile. The whole Inbox Zero thing was working for me, even though its mostly BS. I managed to stay on top of the inbox clutter for about 4 months. Then something happened, some increase in busy and decrease in time, and inbox zero faded into the rearview mirror like a geriatric in the slow lane. My inbox is now at 1400 messages. This works for some people but not for me…I can’t help but feel I’ve dropped the ball on 1400 items somehow.
I keep thinking I’m going to get the time back, or that I should just wipe the whole inbox and admit defeat. In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to recover and process 300 messages a week of the backlog. Most get deleted, some require responses. I have noticed a 90/10 rule in effect also – 10% of the emails require 90% of the time to deal with. The other 90% of the emails are easy to file or delete.
Update 12/08 – My inbox still has 1k messages in it. I am still hoping to get back on track over this winter holiday and start 2009 with an empty inbox. We’ll see. I’m losing confidence this will happen. We’ll see.