Though I don’t follow his 43folders.com site religiously, I’m a big fan of Merlin Mann. In fact, his talk on Living with Data was a pretty eye-opening thing for me, and helped me look at my job (and my approach to work) in a totally different light.
Below is a Google Talk that’s made the rounds the past few months. For most of the tech folks out there, you’ve likely already seen Merlin’s Inbox Zero talk. I just got around to it this weekend, and it’s definitely helped me re-think how I use email to shape my day.
Note: the video below clocks in at a full hour, but the talk itself is only about 30 minutes (the rest of the time is a pretty good Q/A session).
i haven’t practiced inbox zero for the past year, but i keep my “inbox” to a pretty stark minimum. while i archive all my email, i have smart folders set up that i look at by default, which store only the past 7 days of email.as a result, right now my EI inbox has less than 50 messages and my personal email has just over 100. and if i need to search something in the back archive, then i have everything back a few months; i never keep email more than 3 months.
That sounds like a pretty solid approach. I cling to my emails like each one’s got a map to the friggin’ Holy Grail. I’m not quite sure why I hoard all my old messages, but I do. I’ve rarely gone back more than 3 months for some bit of info, so it seems silly to keep everything just because… well… again, I’m not sure why I keep it.