GTD Simplified: What's your inbox style?

posted at 17:30:56
By Flipping Heck!

Posted In
GTD/Productivity

Welcome to the first installment of "GTD Simplified" where each Monday I'll be talking about some of the "ins and outs" of GTD and trying to make them simplier.

I talked about collecting stuff in the first part of the GTD Back To Basics series but what about stuff that crops up on a day-to-day basis?

Email is an obvious one as it has it's own personal "inbox" but what about letters, files, magazines and the other rubbish that gravitates our way at home and work? There are several places (or inboxes) that this stuff could accumulate. Have a look around your office and your home and see if you can spot the following:

An "In-Tray"
A big stack of files begging for your attention
A pile of magazines that just turned up
A stack of envelopes by your front door
A pile of magazines on the coffee table
A load of files by the filing cabinet
A stack of books

I could go on, but I'm sure you get the picture.

Whilst your initial capture may have swept up all of these items they will mount up over time (unless they're sorted during your Weekly Review) and in fact some of the places these items are make perfect sense but David Allen recommends that we minimise the number of collecting areas (inboxes) that we have.

This makes sense for a couple of reasons, firstly if we spread our stuff all over the place it's quite easy to forget we're supposed to capture it during the weekly review. Secondly you'll probably keep on coming across it and then think "Oh, I must do so-and-so with that" which - even if it's on your next actions list/someday-maybe list or project list - will be rather irritating and upset your "Mind Like Water" state.

So, what do you do about it?

Have the minimum number of "inboxes" possible.

Personally I have 4 - some of you will need more, some less but always have the minimum number you can comfortably get away with.

My inboxes are:

In tray on my desk where everything gets dumped (folders, files, magazines etc).
Work email inbox
In basket at home (everything goes here too: bills, letters, magazines, loose change - you name it! Oh, and it is quite large!)
Personal email inbox

From these four places I can pretty much manage all of the stuff that gets thrown at me me during the course of the week and because it's in a designated spot it doesn't bother me until I do a review.

How about you? How many inboxes do you have?