jajajaja, gOd tutorial!!!!

Nice idea. Now if I could organise my entire life in a similar way, I’d be waaaaay ahead :)

“Tomorrow morning you arrive to a spanking fresh inbox and the chance to start anew.”

No you don’t. You arrive to a spanking fresh inbox and a folder in your face called “DMZ” with a large number in the unread messages column next to it.

My way of cleaning up the 1000’s of emails in my inbox usually involves sorting by sender. That makes it much easier to identify maillist bulk mail, etc.

Some people’s mails I can always just delete (the forwarded stuff from my grandfather), others can generally be bulk sorted for archiving (my husband sends me pretty much only useful links - save ‘em, my brother only holds short conversations, but will always phone if he wants to give real information - delete ‘em)

Besides, since I set up the Gmail archive trick, I guess I can always just nuke ‘em…

My email trick:

When the task for an email has been completed, but I want to keep it, I drag it to a folder. When the folder with old messages feels full (over 1000 messages in a folder makes our server gack), I start a new folder named with the current date. Thus, I can fairly easily search for just about any old message.

I think I’m possibly the only person on Earth whose life isn’t brought to a total standstill by email. This would be great if I could drag all the things that distract me from working efficiently into a DMZ folder.

Maybe I should be dragging Firefox in there. Heh.

I wish I could apply this same methodology to certain aspects of my life. The best item to be taken from this whole context is to stop digging. You can actually make a difference as opposed to feeling hamstrung.

OMG, we need the super-secret 15 minute trick now… :-)

Agree—reveal super secret trick please!

My email box is actually pretty decent. I have an @Action folder and an @InProgress folder. The In Progress folder is purely for reference email, and each project has its own subfolder. Nothing goes into @Progress unless it’s in a subfolder. All emails that require action, for any project, go into @Action. When the action is completed, I move the email into the project subfolder or directly into @Reference.

When the project is done, I move the entire project subfolder into @Reference. I also throw miscellaneous “might need to look at again one day” emails into @Reference.

And of course I have (wait for it) an @Waiting. I bet you know what that’s for. I tend to forget about this one, so I have a daily reminder in Outlook “check @Waiting paper and email.”

Simple vanilla GTD and it works just swell.

[…] Fresh Start: The Email DMZ | 43 Folders Like a lot of the best fresh starts, this one’s a total psych-out; also, like most of the best ones, you won’t believe how well it works until you actually try it for yourself. […]

[…] So, today, after readingFresh Start: The Email DMZ, I did as instructed: 1. Open your email program and create a new folder called “DMZ“ 2. Go to your email inbox and Select All * You might alternatively choose all email older than n days 3. Drag those emails from your inbox into the DMZ folder 4. Go, and sin no more. […]

While I have used this technique a few times in the past.. the real key is working out how you are going to keep your inbox looking all spanking new before you go and empty it, otherwise you just end up with another pile of mess that stops you getting to the hidden pile of mess you just created!!!

How do you do this in Gmail, though? I can only select one page of stuff at a time…

I have been meaning to do this for a good long while.

On one hand it’s liberating, on the other hand, I am afraid of going into the DMZ now.

I do something similar but instead of calling the folder DMZ I create a folder called “Dump mm/dd/yyyy” where the mm/dd/yyyy is a date 3 months or so from now (whever you feel comfortable with). Tnen I just go in and delete them or archive them as I feel on that date. That way the mail is there for a search during the intervening time frame and if I have to search for something I then move it into a folder for future reference and to avoid the pending dump. Personally I could almost get away with having all email come in marked for deletion and then I’d unmark it if it was worth anything.

[…] Read the article: Fresh Start: The Email DMZ […]

I try to keep my inbox limited to the visible window at all times. I now hate the creeping feeling that something is lurking just below the preview window (which of course limits inbox viewing space further).

We have a very small size limit, so all reference emails (articles, recent legislation, library bulletins, questions answered etc) go into a folder on our document management system. They are there if I need or want to read them, but I don’t have to worry about them.

Personal emails that I want to keep go into a “Read and kept” folder. This is mostly the rare good joke emails, family photos and emails in the elaborate soap opera that is the lives of my friends which I want to preserve for posterity.

Almost everything else gets either dealt with, put into the DMS or printed and filed. If I still have something to do, I put a note and bring up on the task for the appropriate matter.

The remnant does (must!) fit the procrustean bed that is my inbox - brief emails waiting for a reply, something I can’t bring myself to look at until after a strong cup of tea, etc. This system has worked for me pretty well for almost a year now.

(We send a lot of emails and - being a law firm - must keep a hard copy of all of them and print the sent receipts. I had to train myself to print the emails as soon as they are sent, and the receipts as soon as they come in, and then delete them. Better to sort hard copies at the printer than end up with 2000 anonymous receipts in the inbox).

I just use Gmail’s filtering/labeling, to help me along in figuring out which e-mail needs reading.

Judging by a few comments and numerous carbuncular emails, some folks think this is a big fat copout. Uh…no. It’s actually not. Re-read the post. Everybody catch this part?

You still need to deal with all the emails in your DMZ folder

The idea is not to permanently abandon the emails in your temporary DMZ folder; the idea is simply to STOP blowing off new emails as a result of feeling intractably behind. The unstated prologue to curing Broken Windows Syndrome is that you need to start by not breaking any new windows. Same idea here.

So, yeah. Let’s try to see this for what it is, rather than flaking on what an irresponsible ghoul it turns you into. I’ve taught this trick to people with 5000 emails in their inbox. Did it magically get the 5000 emails dismissed? Nope — that’s a totally different problem to solve. What it did do was ensure that the next day didn’t close with 5100 unprocessed emails, or that their week didn’t conclude with 6000 emails sitting there, etc. The flow of blood was staunched. That’s all it does.

Like most of my crap advice this is not intended as an international panacea, and it definitely won’t rescue your baby from a well. Your mileage may vary, some anal leakage may occur, and, please, no glass containers or flash photography during the final ten minutes of the show.

Thank you, as ever, for your sweetly faked attention.

— The Management

[…] I did this about 3 weeks ago and it works great. […]

I actually did this at the beginning of the week, as part of my New-Years-Get-My-Act-Together movement.

I’ve been deleting/replying/processing the messages at a rate of about 20 per day. It’s been working great. Plus, I’ve been keeping my inbox close to zero, which feels great.

The Email DMZ - Clear Your Mind by Clearing Your Email Inbox

Over at 43 Folders, Merlin has posted a quick way for you to totally clear out your email inbox. It brings to mind some of the Getting Things Done methodology to clearing the inbox, but it’s a hundred times faster.

[…] Over at 43Folders (from which Hawk Wings has learnt much), Merlin Mann recommends creating a DMZ mailbox in your email client. […]

43 Folders: The Email DMZ

This is a great way to kick start your 2006 commitment to good email management.

I did pretty much this same thing at the end of October when I was first exposed to GTD (thanks, Merlin!). Instead of using the DMZ folder, I just said all emails after October 31 in my inbox will be sorted (@actions, etc.), responded to, or trashed. And everytime I received email to be sorted, I just did a few extra in the process since I was in the sorting mode. Of course, I had over 3000 emails (small amount compared to some of you, and you know who you are) to do so I just placed another arbitary date on the line—June—and just plain archived them (cringe). Now my inbox is clean and is processed regularly (mileage may vary for others) and can attest to the belief that the “email DMZ” method does work!

I feel like I’m on top of things as long as I have less than 10 emails in each of my email accounts. I try and keep it under 10 each day (even if some of the “will take a while to reply to” emails stay in there for a while.

I think that Sonia Simone let the cat out of the bag by saying how you can usefully use your email program to Organise your emails rather than just Keep them. Not ALL of your emails have any future action, are waiting on some event or are useful for reference… why dump them all in the same pile? Why dump them into 50 identical piles? You should put each email into the pile it deserves to be in - actionable, waiting, reference, useless… then ACTION the actionable emails, PUSH the waiting emails, put the references in a place you will REFER to and give your life meaning and purpose by destroying the useless ones.

You don’t need them, they need you. Kill them.

For @Followups I find it useful to prepend the message header with ‘fu’ then send it to myself and filter it into the @Followups folder - possibly using a delayed send (easy to find T.B. extension) so that I get the reminder to followup up on the right day - rather than just have a little nagger in the system saying “You really ought to follow this up with this person some time.” (My boss, bless his socks, does the same and he just resends his ‘fu’ emails out periodically [and, I suspect, automatically] until he gets a response.]

I don’t think you should cringe about archiving old emails - anything non-current (or non-potentially-current) only serves as a distraction. Always look to the future.

If something’s archived, then it’s gone but retrievable - IT can no longer distract YOU from [achieving world domination]; the only interaction you will ever have with again is if YOU want IT. If something sits in your Inbox (any of your inboxes) that means that you fully intend to get some future value out of it. If you go through the Inbox once and leave it there you’ve committed a small sin. If you go through again, then again, and five times more and it’s still there then you have to be honest with yourself and say “I actually have NO intention of using this. I must kill it before it kills me.”

The goal is to be able to look at a group of emails and see only useful, actionable, current information that you can be using right now to be making your life better - everything else is slowing you down.

(sorry for criminally long post)

Well, as one of those carbuncular email authors, and a reader who did not miss a single one of your exact words in your post, I restate comment #3 above:

“What it did do was ensure that the next day didn’t close with 5100 unprocessed emails, or that their week didn’t conclude with 6000 emails sitting there, etc.”

No, it didn’t ensure that. The next day DID close with 5100 unprocessed emails: 5000 of which were placed in “DMZ” instead of left in “Inbox”.

You acknowledge this outright, and gesture toward something else with your hand, “But look! They’re not in front of me! Clean slate. Only not.”

And I’d swallow that if you could illustrate the value in it. It’s bought you something that I cannot comprehend from what you’ve written, or you wouldn’t have been moved to write about it. So can you tell me what 5000 unprocessed emails in a different folder bought you?

Or are we not supposed to be challening in post comments?

An old boss of mine had a great system for managing her email. It is called the “trash”.

Whenever you finally got to the point were you desperately needed for her to respond to an email you had sent her, you would go to her office and say, “I need an answer on the email I sent you about X.” “What?” she would say, “I never got that.” Then you would have to say, “Really? Are you sure? Check your trash.” She would, and after only five or ten minutes of narrowing down the date, etc, to find it, she would read it and give you your answer.

Ah. Good times.

An old boss of mine had a great system for managing her email. It is called the “trash”.

Haha. I have a great friend and occasional client who employs a similar approach to run a very successful company; he ignores all email until there are basically threats and exclamation points in the subject line.

Thus he moves, crisis to crisis — flashing from one screaming phone call to the next until it’s time to go home. Good times, indeed!