Yesterday, I finally watched the infamous “inbox zero” video. Through the whole thing I kept thinking “Wow, this is great, but I can never use it in my job…”

This morning I did my very best to fit the strategy into my work flow. I printed the slide “Delete, Delegate, Respond, Defer, Do” and stuck it on my cubicle wall next to my CRT. But I’m still troubled by the notion that I “have” to get to zero.

I’m in a project management position, where I’m usually managing between 3 and 5 projects concurrently. I finally realized I can categorize email in Outlook, and have now setup search folders for each project.

I tried going to “zero” in the past, but found I lost track of ongoing conversations related to each project, such as approval processes for money, and other decisions. For me, getting to “zero” doesn’t make sense. Instead I have search folders setup in my archive as well, and have all messages older than two weeks automatically archived. Two weeks seems to be the timeframe in which most conversations wrap up for me, so it works. I can quickly refer back to recent conversation when I decide to delegate, respond, defer, or do, and unfortunately I seldom delete.

I guess I’m sort of orbiting about “zero”