Cutting email from hours to 5 minutes - and saving power hours!

This carries on from the task management pieces:

Simple no holes task management - a MUST!

A simplified, effective, easy to do task list that will better your life!


AVOIDING THE SUCKING VORTEX!

One of the key time management mistakes involves a huge, sucking vortex, sucking your time and your brains from your day.

That is "email processing".

I found I could, in the morning power hours unfortunately, follow up lots of links and read lots of emails and have a great time going nowhere.


AND NOW BOUNDARIES

So I had to set a boundary (the first one I couldn't keep regularly, so I expanded the boundary a bit) of spending no more than 5, with a possibility of 10, minutes on email processing in my ramp up for my day.  I do it while having a cup of coffee, usually outside, and eating some plain not-fat-free yogurt and blueberries (in a measuring cup where I only fill it to one cup) for breakfast.

An alarm goes off every 5 minutes, so I don't go into obliviousness, being caught up in "shiny objects".


ORGANIZING FOR ACTION

I first started putting some structure into my email process with adding folders in my email program so that I could move my emails to the relevant folder, but that turned out to be too burdensome and fairly useless.

I started with 10 "sorting" folders (plus I do have subject folders).  The subject folders are now turning into relics as I now will email them into Evernote, adding a to do from emailing from Evernote to GQueues, if needed.  I can, of course, just forward the original email for action into GQueues directly, being sure to describe in the subject bar what the action is to be.  It turned out that there were too many folders, so I let many of them go unused.

I was overly ambitious compared to what I could actually do.


CONFUSING EMAILS WITH TO DOS SORTING

And also I had a set of folders prioritizing emails that involved "To do"s, which system did not work at all!  Instead, now, I send them to GQueues to be processed (including dumping them on second thought as I see that I already have too much to do!).


THE REVISED SYSTEM

Anyway, skipping over the other ones that didn't work, I now still have AA1R1Sure (AA is to position it at the top) for those emails I move there that I want to "for sure" read.  Then AA1RHIgh, for other "worthy" reading.  And finally, because I couldn't resist supposedly, an AA1Misc for items that were "of interest" but not of high value.  And then a AA2Watch folder, which I might, optionally, turn into a to do in my inbox - I'll do that for sure if it is something I consider of high value to watch.
Then each morning, if I haven't done it the night before, I move from my emails in my email inbox to one of the above folders the emails I will or might want to read.  I am not permitted to actually read the emails before I've sorted them into folders!  This works pretty well.  (In other words, it is a good "rule" to have - one that is keepable.)

I find that when I have to "think" ahead and discriminate about the actual value of something, I will put just a few (sometimes just one or two) in the Sure folder, a number in the High folder and some of the stragglers in the Misc folder.  As a result, I barely, most often, get through the Sure ones, leaving the other ones often unread and just piling up to rot away in time - as they are not needed or of sufficiently high value to displace other things I can do with my time.  Note that this saves me alot of time as I am much more (consciously) discriminating.  Note also that I only do almost all the processing in the evening, where my power hours are nonexistent and I can use the time for the less valuable!

The compromise for my indulgence of my "relaxed, nonambitious" primitive mind in the morning is that I will read one or two in the Sure folder in the morning.  Some senders are always of high value, such as Farnam Street Blog, so I know I am likely to enjoy them - but I must stop extensive processing of some of the links or items referred to even if they have some further value, so I transfer them to Evernote and then email them for processing into GQueues.  And then I follow up later.


MUCH SAVED TIME!!!  ESPECIALLY POWER HOURS!!!

That's it.  From what could be hours that suck up my power hours, to about 5 to 10 minutes in the start up of my day.