Josh’s Crazy Productivity System Step 3

• Josh’s Crazy Productivity System Step 1
• Josh’s Crazy Productivity System Step 2
• Josh’s Crazy Productivity System Step 4

The primary step here is to get to inbox zero. I target a completely empty inbox at least once a week. This will remove that feeling that you are missing something and ensure incoming tasks and information will not be lost. Finally, you will save time so you don’t have to regularly wade through a pile of emails to find the things you need.

The first step is to pick a date sometime in the past when you are confident nothing important is lurking then archive everything before then. This could be anything older than 1 year. Note, I put everything in another folder I call archive rather than delete it because there have been those times I needed to go back and find something.

Step two is to identify emails on a specific topic or from a particular sender through the search and archive those. This works well for general announcements or automated emails.

Step three is to start defining filters to handle emails you don’t need automatically. Once again this is great for automated emails.

Step four is to start processing everything else. You may want to set aside half an hour to an hour each day. As you process these items you may take action from one of the previous three steps. This is also where you start putting the relevant items into your task capture system.

In an extreme example from a book I am reading (Come Up For Air by Nick Sonnenberg), everybody at one company saved one day a week by going to inbox zero.