Inbox Zero

Cranking

Merlin — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 17:38:56 -0400

1.

Nothing wrecks your living room decor quite like a giant, rented hospital bed.

The one my Dad laid in for a couple months in the fall of 1974 was an alarmingly stiff and sturdy affair, the frame of which was forged of impossibly heavy iron, with half a dozen jaggy coats of putty-flesh latex paint doing a shit job of concealing the dings and dents kissed by dozens of clutches of burly rental guys trying to navigate unaccommodating residential doors.

Jammed cattywampus between a teddy-bear brown sectional, an antiqued rococo credenza, and what had until recently been my Father's favorite armchair, the hospital bed left little room for easy socializing, let alone aesthetic speculation. This was a living room where a very ill person would mostly die soon.

The hospital bed's defining feature was the theoretical ease with which the human trunk slumped in its top half could be raised or lowered by turning a shitty little crank at the foot of its lower half. Like the bed itself, the shitty little crank was ugly and obtrusive and hard to live with. Mom and I tripped over the crank a lot.

The theoretically useful but ultimately shitty little crank made the hospital bed look like those old-timey cars we'd see in the bad silent movies they showed down at Shakey's Pizza.

Mom and Dad despised the saltines-and-ketchup style of pizza served at Shakey's. To them, LaRosa's over on Cheviot had way better pizza plus a pretty good jukebox. But, I really liked Shakey's. They gave away cool styrofoam boater hats with a red paper band that said, "Shakey's Pizza Parlor." Which I thought looked smashing. So, they used to take me to Shakey's.

In practice, the hospital bed's shitty little crank functioned mostly as a recalcitrant and pinch-inducing mechanism for eroding my father's dignity.

Dad would lay in the hospital bed that filled our living room while my Mom slowly cranked. He'd try to make jokes. (Dad had always been the funniest person any of his friends knew.) The hospital bed creaked. Mom cranked. Dad's tired upper half would haltingly rise and bob with reluctant help from the bed's upper half. Mom sweated at the crank. Dad laid there and watched. Dad couldn't help. He watched. He was in the hospital bed. Mom did all the cranking. Dad watched. He watched while his wife turned a shitty little iron crank, trying impotently to make her best friend just a tiny bit more comfortable as his body worked to finally finish eating itself. But, he couldn't help out. I think he wanted to help out. But, he couldn't help out.

She couldn't really help my Dad. My Dad couldn't really help her. But they sure tried.

She cranked and cranked.

I was seven. I didn't know how to help anyone.

2.

The last time I saw my Dad, he was in a different hospital bed. That one was a much more functional and aesthetically appropriate unit neatly fitted into an overlit semi-private room in the highly-regarded Jewish Hospital located on E. Galbraith Road. We weren't Jewish. We were just sick.

Frankly, I forget what the crank on the second hospital bed looked like, but I seem to recall that it worked just fine.

This was maybe a week before my Dad died.

From what I can gather, he and my Mom had wanted to time things so that I could be with him as long and as late as possible--but not so late that I'd have to see him in the kind of condition I have to assume he was in during the full week he was too ill for his boy to visit him. Pretty bad condition, I'm guessing.

In the almost forty years since Dad's last week in any hospital bed, my Mom and I haven't talked much about it. If there are things to say about that week, I'm not sure even forty years is long enough to prep for them. I know I'm still not ready. I should ask my Mom if she's ready. She was forty then. Just under half her life ago.

What I do know is my Mom lived by that second hospital bed most every minute of Dad's last week. Just like she'd been by the first hospital bed in her living room for the months before. Only now she was the one sleeping on the wrong bed. There are limits to the physical comforts you can offer a woman who's determined to stay by her husband's second hospital bed until it's time.

But she was there that whole time. Up to the last time my sweet Dad ever said anything to anyone.

As he laid in that second hospital bed, I'm told that the last thing my Dad said to anyone was something he said to my Mom. He told my Mom:

Take care of The Big Guy.

That was me. I was "The Big Guy." My Dad always called me "Big Guy," and I always loved when he said that. It made me feel strong. It made me feel tall. It made me know that my Dad and I were best pals.

I still love knowing I was my Dad's best pal.

3.

I don't specifically remember the day our particular clutch of burly rental guys came out to remove the first hospital bed from our living room. I do remember thinking it was weird how quickly the space filled with huge floral arrangements, covered dishes and casseroles, and a pack of outdoorsy men with giant red hands who were new to sobbing inconsolably in front of each other.

But, that hospital bed had been heavy. Really heavy. And even though the bed's wheels had been thoughtfully nested in plastic casters, the raw tonnage of the iron motherfucker left permanent dents in our ugly, broccoli-green carpeting. Six breadplate-sized dents that were still there a year and a half later on the day my Mom and I moved out.

We didn't need a house that big for just the two of us. Plus, the living room wasn't much fun to hang out in any more.

Way too big. Way too big.

4.

I don't currently have a hospital bed. I have a modest but very comfortable regular bed in a regular bedroom where I sleep with my regular wife. She's my favorite part of the bed.

To my knowledge, our modest but very comfortable bed is not fitted with a shitty little crank. Which is nice for everyone.

And, every single morning at almost exactly 6:00 AM Pacific Time, my three-year-old daughter wakes up, jumps out of her crank-free, regular, big-girl bed, tears out of her regular bedroom, and--even before she gets her hot milk or takes off her pull-up or tells us to turn on Toy Story 2--she dashes into our regular bedroom, runs up to our regular non-hospital bed, and screams, "DAD-dy! DAD-dy! DAD-dy!" until I wake up and say, "G'mornin', Sweet Bug! Did you have nice sleeps?"

Sometimes she tells me whether or not she had nice sleeps. Often as not lately, she tells me to make her hot milk and turn on Toy Story 2. Both of which I'm totally fine with.

Thing is, she screams "DAD-dy!" like the most impossibly great thing in the world has just happened. Every single morning. Right by my bed. Without a crank in sight.

And, you know what? Something impossibly great has happened.

Because an annoying, rambling, disagreeable little man like me gets to have this alarm clock in piggy-patterned footie jammies run up to a regular, crank-less, healthy-Dad, non-hospital bed and make him feel like he's The Greatest Thing in the Universe.

Just like I think she's The Greatest Thing in the Universe.

Just like I thought my Dad was The Greatest Thing in the Universe.

And, although I'm confident that I will always think my daughter is The Greatest Thing in the Universe, I'm also all too aware that this feeling will not always be reciprocated in quite that same way or with quite that same enthusiasm that we both enjoy right now.

She won't always run to my bed in footie jammies.

I'll only get that particularly noisy and personalized wake-up call for a little while. And, I only get a shot at it once a day. At almost exactly 6:00 AM Pacific Time.

Then one day? I won't get it any more. It will be gone.

5.

Many mornings over the past six months or so, at almost exactly 6:00 AM Pacific Time, I was not in my regular bed. I was not even at home. I was sitting in another building, typing bullshit that I hoped would please my book editor. Who, by the way, is awesome.

And, if I noticed what time it was, I'd always wonder whether my daughter had run into our bedroom yet.

I'd wonder whether she had seen my side of the bed empty again. And, when I thought about my empty spot on the bed and how disappointed she'd be to scream "DAD-dy! DAD-dy! DAD-dy!" then see I'm not even there, I'd die a little.

I'd die a little, because as I thought about her, I'd think about my Dad. And as I thought about my Dad, I'd start thinking about hospital beds with cranks--then on to dents, and covered dishes, and rooms full of sobbing outdoorsy guys, and so on.

But, by then it might be 6:10 am Pacific Time. And I didn't have time to think about my family. Not now, right? No, I had to keep working. I had to stay in that other building and keep typing bullshit that I hoped would please my editor. Who is awesome.

So, I'd type and type. I'd crank and crank. I'd try and try. I'd want very much to go home, make hot milk, and watch Toy Story 2. So much, I'd want this.

6.

Anyhow, this has been my on-and-off job for the past two years. I type. And, I try to type things that will help and comfort people, but mostly I try to type things that will please my editor. Who is awesome.

Sometimes I do my job at 6:00 AM Pacific Time. Sometimes I do my job at 5:30 PM or 11:30 AM or really any time in between. Sometimes I do my job while my family goes to birthday parties and holiday dinners and a couple vacations and I don't even know how many (non-Shakey's) pizza nights--all without me. Without Dad.

In fact, a depressing amount of the time--really up until this week--I would do my job until I hadn't the slightest idea what time it was or what bullshit I was typing or what my crank was ever meant to be attached to in the first place.

But, even when my shitty little crank was not attached to anything, I did keep cranking. Because, Dads do their job. It's what they do.

They crank. They crank and crank and crank and crank.

Sometimes the cranking made something special that will be really useful to people who badly need the comfort and help. But, a staggering amount of the time, my cranking has produced joyless and unemotional bullshit that couldn't comfort, help, or please anyone. Especially my editor. Who is awesome. There's no point in doing anything if it doesn't eventually please my editor. Who is awesome.

This has constantly hung over my head. For two fucking years.

But, this has been my job. It's a job I often did late. It's a job I often did poorly. And, it's a job where I often didn't pull my load or live up to even my own expectations and standards. Which is far from my editor's fault.

She's been awesome.

7.

Anyhow, I've tried to do my job. But, I've often failed.

I've sometimes failed to make things that will help and comfort people. And, God knows I've failed to please my editor.

And, worst of all, more often than my heart can bear at 2:34 pm Pacific Time on Friday April 22nd, I know I've failed to be home for several of my daily shot at "DAD-dy! DAD-dy! DAD-dy!"

It's now become unavoidably clear to me that I've been doing each of these things poorly. The job, the making, the pleasing, and, yeah, the being at home. And I can't live with that for another day. So, I've chosen which one has to go. At least in the way it's worked to date. Which is to say not working.

I'll let you guess which.

Because, that? That choosing? That's what my book needs to be about. Not about pleasing people. Not about cranking on bullshit. Not about abandoning your priorities to write about priorities.

My book needs to be about choosing a hard thing and then living with it. Because it's your thing.

But, that part's gone missing for just a little too long now. Certainly not missing from my handsome and very practical rhetoric--it's been missing from my actual life and living. In a quest to make something that has increasingly not felt like my own, I've unintentionally ignored my own counsel to never let your hard work fuck up the good things. Including those regular people. Including, ironically, the real work. Including any good thing the crank is supposed to be attached to.

So, I'm done fucking that up. I'm done cranking. And, I'm ready to make a change.

I'm not sure precisely what that change will look like, but, at the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, I have a pretty good idea that this particular performance of "Edelweiss" you're enjoying right now may immediately be followed by a dramatic chase, a hopeful escape attempt, and only if I'm extremely lucky, maybe an eventual stride over the Alps.

As I'll explain in a minute, it most likely means I don't have My Book Contract any more.

Who knows? We'll have to see.

8.

All I know is tonight's Friday. And, that's Daddy-Daughter Night.

And, my book agent says my editor (who is awesome) will probably cancel My Book Contract if I don't send her something that pleases her…today. Now. By tonight. Theoretically, I guess...uh...this.

See: my agent very helpfully suggested I send my editor a chapter full of "email stuff." My editor really likes "email stuff." And, it was theorized by my agent that sending this "email stuff" might please my book editor just enough that she might not cancel My Book Contract. For now.

Well. If you've made it this far, you, like my editor (who is awesome), will have realized that this is not a chapter of "email stuff."

It's a very long, wooly, histrionic, messy and uncomfortable story about hospital beds, piggy jammies, and styrofoam hats. I seriously doubt it will please my editor. Who is awesome.

So, no, I really hope she doesn't cancel My Book Contract. But, it does occur to me that said contract is the last and only thing my publisher has to intimidate me into doing things I don't want to do. Things I think will harm my book, my integrity, and my life.

Once that threat is made good, the game ends. They can sue me and yell and stuff. Which would suck, but at least no one would be demanding my book have fucking pussy willows on the cover. Which, as I sit here, feels more and more unbearable to me.

In any case, I don't control anything that anyone does. It took a long time for me to really get that.

It's such a funny thing. Threats--like hurricanes and rectal exams--are only scary until they arrive. Once they're over, they're just the basis for funny stories. But, you do nearly always survive them. And, if you didn't survive? It wasn't because of a lack of fear. Like I say, the universe doesn't particularly care whether you're scared.

Oh, well. I like my editor. She's awesome. I hope she doesn't cancel My Book Contract. I hope we keep working together.

But if it goes away today, tomorrow or further on? Well. As a favorite novelist of mine used to say: "So it goes."

I'll figure this out tomorrow. Or Monday. Or later. Tonight is Daddy-Daughter Night. And, no fucking way am I missing two in a row.

9.

Now, as far as My Goddamned Book? Truthfully? Wanna hear the really complicated part?

This is not me quitting the book. No fucking way. This is me doubling down on the book--on my book.

I will finish my book very soon. Not because of (or in spite of) any contract, and not because of (or in spite of) any editor, and certainly not because of (or in spite of) any tacit demand for empty cranking.

I will finish my book because I want to finish it. Because it is very, very important to me to finish it.

But, again, let's be clear-- what I finish will be my book. And, it will be done my way. And, yes--you Back to Work fans knew this one was coming--my book will have my cover that I choose. It will not have fucking pussy willows or desert islands or third-rate kerning. It will be, to quote my editor (who is awesome), "messy."

My book will help and comfort the people that I want to reach. And, yes, much like my editor, my book will be awesome.

I truly hope my book pleases her.

10.

So, there you have it. An article that's clearly not a chapter of "email stuff."

Me? I'm off to prep for "Daddy-Daughter Night."

And, tomorrow morning, unlike last Saturday morning and countless other days before it, at the crack of 6:00 am Pacific Time, I will be available in my regular crankless bed to ask my daughter whether she had nice sleeps. And I will tell her and my regular wife that I think they're the Greatest Things in the Universe.

And, maybe after I make hot milk and watch Woody worry about cowboy camp, I may even think to myself about how proud my funny Dad would be of his pal, The Big Guy. For doing what needed to be done. To be someone special's Dad for as often and as long as he can. Just like he did. Even when it gets hard.

Even when it gets really hard.

-- 30 --

Thanks for listening, nerds. You'll hear more when I hear more.

”Cranking” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on April 22, 2011. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now)

Merlin — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:17:46 -0400

Video: Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now) - Vimeo [NSFW]
MP3, Audio Only: Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now) [NSFW]

Here's a video I made about a video I made. Consequently, it's also about writing a book, fake self-help, the long road to developing expertise, and the ups and downs of repeatedly asking the world to tell you who you are.

The video is long. As usual. This is how it works.

I'd had this fancy idea that I'd do a DFW-style dump of annotations about what I talk about over these 40 minutes, and I might add that later, but for now here's all you need to know:

Dish soap cleans dishes; Stuart Brown says everybody needs Play; Rands has a cave where he doesn't multitask; The Dreyfus Model has five stages; Andy Hunt wants you to Think & Learn Pragmatically; my pal, Sean Hussey helped me figure some of this stuff out.

And, oh, what the heck. Here's how to supercharge your zen turbocharger with "5 Surprising House Hacks!" [even more NSFW]

[Index Card Photo: Inbox Zero Tumblr]

”Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now)” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 22, 2009. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

On Peanut Shells and Email Archiving

Merlin — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:22:07 -0400

Real Estate Connect San Francisco 2008 | Inman News

Later this morning, I'm honored to be delivering the keynote address at the Inman Real Estate Connect conference here in San Francisco -- coincidentally, a conference I attended in 2000 as the "Senior Producer" (whatever that means) for the real estate dotcom I was working for.

I'll be doing my Inbox Zero talk and touching on some of the ways that real estate agents can use the system in their go-go, always-on sales environment.

There are several new slides in today's deck that I'll be premiering with this version of the talk -- the one above reflects something I've been returning to a lot lately in helping people to spend less time fiddling with their messages: stop obsessing about "organizing" your email.

The simplest way you could possibly archive

If you really learn to work the Inbox Zero methodology -- and, perhaps more importantly, if you accept the philosophical rethinking of email that Inbox Zero encourages -- you start to realize how little of your processed email needs to be filed, foldered, tagged, or otherwise thought about and manipulated. Once you're liberated the requests for your time and attention into where they really belong (tasks list, calendar, etc.), you're done with it. Fin. Move on.

Fifteen years ago, when I first started using internet email, I did what everyone I knew did. I saved and manually filed every message I ever received in a complex series of dated, taxonomical folders. It was, as Grandpa Simpson would say, the style at the time.

Get a horse (and key commands)

But, today, most of us have moved on to more modern applications like Gmail, Mail.app, and even Outlook, which permit sophisticated searching and "Smart Folders" that can do much of the organizing and thinking for us. One Archive to rule them all.

This is not to say that you cannot or should not ever manually file a message -- you or your company may have special needs that require record-keeping or fault-intolerant latency times for retrieving old messages. But, I very strongly encourage you to keep this system as simple as you can stand.

Once the action of a message has been liberated and moved to the right place (outside your inbox), it should require zero thinking to know where that dead message goes. Trash it or throw it into the Big Archive.

If it takes you more than exactly one second to get that message out of your inbox (yes, you should be using key commands for this stuff), your system needs a tweak.

Lose the shells?

So, the peanuts.

The idea here is that you probably don't have a place in your home or office where you store the shells from every peanut you ever ate. If you did, you'd definitely want to organize them by the year in which you ate them, perhaps keeping separate jars per-month or per-location where you ate the nut. You know. For posterity.

But you don't do that. It would be insane. Once you eat the peanut, the job of the shell is done. So lose it. Ditto dead email. Never organize what you can simply discard; and if you can't discard it, throw it onto one big pile.

Learn more about Inbox Zero as well as Merlin’s speaking work.

”On Peanut Shells and Email Archiving” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 24, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

The Annoying Productive Guy At Work: Shaming Users One Color At A Time

Derrick Bostrom — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:08:52 -0400

I was recently put in charge of on-site tech services after a two year apprenticeship as the assistant. Surveying the mess left to me by my former boss, I'm amazed at how many open projects he allowed to grind to a dead stop on his watch. I suppose it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Bloated from the effects of rapid growth, my company suffers from years of rampant position-creation and ill-considered solution grafts. Left to grapple with a culture of contradictory goals, incomplete training and an end-to-end process similar to Sartre's "No Exit" ("hell is other departments"), I'm surprised my predecessor got anything done at all.

My new assistant is an 18-year-old "millennial," as I guess we're calling them now. He's a young computer Borg who could hack before he could walk. In a probably vain attempt to keep him from quitting before I get in at least one decent vacation, I'm constantly looking for ways to keep him engaged.

"What IS all this crap??" He guffaws at the cascade of emails that greets us every morning. "Do you really READ all of this??"

You don't read it, I tell him, you PROCESS it. It'll take months before he learns to fish the actions out from the dozens and dozens of messages clogging his in-box all day long. But once he learns to manage the broadcast, he'll also get a front-row seat for the epic drama of fear and heartbreak that passes through our mail server every day. Our company's high reliance on email creates such a dense barrage that it creates a perfect means through which things fall through the cracks.

I work in a high-turnover, low-skill, interruption-driven work environment where a strong back and the ability to keep the rabble in line will get you a lot farther than any sort of transcendent appreciation and mastery of technology. Folks here are typically over-worked and under-paid, and when I have to insert myself into their already overburdened workflow, their reactions range from passive-aggression to open hostility.

A couple of week ago, I found an old performance review while cleaning out my desk. On the final page, scribbled in an area marked "goals," was an odd item which I'd forgotten all about: "develop training program for helping leadership better manage email." Last year, I was told to work with our Outlook users whose mailboxes had grown too large, announcing that those folks above 60 megabytes would be having their accounts suspended. (Of course, the deadline came and went with no action taken, despite some of my users having in-boxes more than ten times the allowable size.) The project came to mind the other day as I looked over a co-worker's shoulder.

"Why don't you delete that unread five-megabyte email from someone who hasn't worked here since last spring?" I asked her.

She looked up at me with heavy lidded eyes and replied, "I'm...just...too...busy...."

This person's experience was typical. It would have been a blessing if her account was suspended; the system was all but useless to her anyway. Trying to explain best practices to such a hapless user is a lost cause. I decided to try an approach that combined humor, some color, and a little public humiliation. Every week, I would load all of my users into a spreadsheet sorted by mailbox size. I gave each increment of 100 megs a different color and attached a gag color legend, changing the gags every week. One week, the red users (my worst offenders) had "completely given up," the next they were "blackballed from the Clean Plate Club." Last week, they were "helping the terrorists." And so on.

It got people's attention. Yesterday, my heavy-lidded co-worker finally asked for some help. First we separated out all actionable stuff. Then we fished out all relevant reference material. Then we banished the rest. I stitched everything into place with a small but powerful handful of rules, then showed her the result. She looked it over for a minute or two, then suddenly turned to me with a startled look on her face. "My god!" She cried, pointing to the screen. "I didn't realize this was due on Monday!"

In effect, I've started an ongoing email clinic. Some people respond to the competition: they want a lower number than Lumpy in the next desk over. Others will just add me to their pile of unread messages. But folks are also coming forward who are genuinely interested in freeing themselves. I'm sure my approach won't work on everyone. After all, no one gets up at the crack of dawn and tries to cram 60-plus hours of work into 40-hour work week, just so they can satisfy the arbitrary impositions of some guy from another department that they hardly know. But I keep the offer out there, and eventually I'll rescue the ones worth saving. To be honest though, I'm really just trying to save myself. It's these modest checks in the win column that help me make it through the work day.

”The Annoying Productive Guy At Work: Shaming Users One Color At A Time” was written by Derrick Bostrom for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 23, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

43 Folders Series: Inbox Zero

Merlin — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 09:37:00 -0400

These are posts from a special 43 Folders series looking at the skills, tools, and attitude needed to empty your email inbox — and then keep it that way. You can visit each of the posts by clicking the title.

And don’t miss the “Related Articles” for our all-time popular posts on productively dealing with email.

**Looking for the Inbox Zero video?**

The full 1-hour video for Merlin’s Inbox Zero presentation at Google is available for free down here — or check out this post about the video and slideshow.

Posts in the Inbox Zero series

43F Series: Inbox Zero [Introduction] - “Clearly, the problem of email overload is taking a toll on all our time, productivity, and sanity, mainly because most of us lack a cohesive system for processing our messages and converting them into appropriate actions as quickly as possible.”
Inbox Zero: Articles of faith - “When I first suggested the email DMZ and said there was a way to get your inbox to zero in 20 minutes, I wasn’t lying. But I was using a definition of “empty” that may not square with your current conception of the email world. So let’s start with a few of my own articles of faith to ensure we’re on the same page going forward.”
Inbox Zero: Five sneaky email cheats - “In the words of the great Lucas Jackson: ‘Yeah, well, sometimes nothin’ can be a real cool hand.’”
Inbox Zero: Where filters will and won’t help - “[F]ocus on creating filters and scripts for any noisy, frequent, and non-urgent items which can be dealt with all at a pass and later. ”
Inbox Zero: Delete, delete, delete (or, “Fail faster”) - “Just remember that every email you read, re-read, and re-re-re-re-re-read as it sits in that big dumb pile is actually incurring mental debt on your behalf. The interest you pay on email you’re reluctant to deal with is compounded every day and, in all likelihood, it’s what’s led you to feeling like such a useless slacker today.”
Inbox Zero: Schedule email dashes - “If you can get away from being driven by email’s motor and find a way to deal with your work mindfully and on your own terms, you may be startled to see how much easier it is to keep that inbox at zero.”
Inbox Zero: What’s the action here? - “Focus on finding the fastest and straightest path from discovery to completion, and your inbox fu will be strong.”
Inbox Zero: Processing to zero - “You’ll never stay ahead of this stuff if you don’t recalibrate starting today. Give each message as much attention as it needs and not one iota more. Remember the contextuality of triage: if you keep trying to care for dead and doomed patients, you’ll end up losing a lot of the ones who could have actually used your help.”
Inbox Zero: What have you learned? - “Try to learn from what you’ve just experienced, and reapply your new wisdom to the way you treat email every day — nay, every time that little “new mail” chime sounds. You’ve just come out the other side of productivity bankruptcy and have, perhaps for the first time, a clean record and a fresh start.”
Inbox Zero: Better Practices for staying (near) zero - “As a person who has done the near-impossible and managed to establish a temporary beachhead against the occupying email army, you are your own best expert in what needs to change to keep things together, but I’d like to share a few things that have helped me stay email-sane (most of the time).”

These are, to date (2006-03-13), our most popular posts on email and were recently collected in a recap article, “Becoming an Email Ninja.”

Five fast email productivity tips “There’s been a lot of great discussions about email productivity going around on sites I enjoy, so I thought I’d throw in five no-brainers that I’ve seen help a lot of folks.”
Quick tips on processing your email inbox - “The basic idea is to firewall processing as a discrete phase you go through no more than every hour or two at the most. For God’s sake, don’t live in your Inbox if there’s any way you can avoid it.”
Writing sensible email messages - “As we’ve seen before, getting your inbound email under control will give you a huge productivity boost, but what about all the emails you send? If you want to be a good email citizen and ensure the kind of results you’re looking for, you’ll need to craft messages that are concise and easy to deal with. ”
Five email tics I’d love for you to lose - “For the love of God, people; can we get the word out on these?”
My email diet - “Gmail’s made me see the value of having very few actual folders for storing new and archived mail. It makes it much easier to track and organize your mail on the fly, plus Google’s search and labeling tools let you confidently shunt items out of your inbox constantly without fear of having stuff disappear. So I decided to try a little experiment.”
Fresh Start: The Email DMZ - “Think about it: how much stuff in your life has gotten unmanageable simply because you decided at some point that you were too behind to ever make a difference? More than anything you need a way to recover these projects from the brink — to find the handle that lets you stop making it worse and start seeing a way back toward daylight.”
4-1/2 tiny ways to master Mail.app - “Seriously, though, suck it up and just check for new mail as seldom as your job and your patience will possibly permit. Really push the envelope on this, even just for half a day, and see if you don’t notice a difference. The world actually can spin without you for a while (but just a little while).”
Open Thread: The value and quality of email at work - “If I ran a company and learned that most of my employees were spending that much time touching internal email, I’d ask my managers: ‘For how many and which employees is six hours of email each day adding value to the company?’ Maybe that’s just me.”

New: Merlin’s Inbox Zero Presentation

Merlin does a live presentation on Inbox Zero from time to time. The latest version of the presentation was delivered on July 23, 2007 at a Google Tech Talk in Mountain View, CA. You can download a PDF of the slides for the presentation and can watch the 58-minute video of the talk and Q&A right here:

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”43 Folders Series: Inbox Zero” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 13, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Inbox Zero

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