I watched/listened to a Google Tech Talk by Merlin Mann today, Inbox Zero. It was great!
I had started thinking, “Do I really need to be keeping all these comments on my computer?” I’ve been staring at Mail, which now has the threaded emails feature enabled (I was so stoked when I discovered it, or my husband showed it to me *cough*), thinking, “Everytime I get new mail in a particular thread it brings all those old ones to the front that I don’t want to look at now and probably never again…” It was getting to breaking point; you know, when you just can’t bear to look at your inbox anymore? So I thought, “Hey, why don’t I watch this Inbox Zero video that’s been sitting on my computer for a while?!”
No, I didn’t keep every single comment that I was subscribed to. I deleted the ones that didn’t address me or what I’d said, and ones that were just reiterating what others had said. Hello!? Why did I keep any of them? To be honest I think it was an ego trip – I liked people replying to my comments, telling me I was right. I realised, if there is something useful in those comments that I want to come back to I can just go to the blog and find it! I don’t need this ego boost that demolishes my sense of control with its clutter.
I think my favourite part of the talk was the slide “Delete, Delegate, Respond, Defer and Do” and all the explanation that went along with that. It’s about adopting a system with which you can deal with emails and take appropriate action. Of course, it’s not good enough just to have the system, you need to use it properly. I’m sure that Merlin said it better than I could summarise it, so I’ll just say, I think my problem was deferring. It’s okay to defer, but don’t let that sucker sit in your inbox until it becomes something that you’re procrastinating. Deal with it!
Cleaning up my act
I’ve known for a while that I didn’t really know how to use Mail. I asked my husband and he told me about mailboxes and filters. I now have comments from my blogs going into their own mailboxes, I have archives for things that I really want to keep (mainly for accountability reasons) and everything else is deleted as soon as I’ve dealt with it. Don’t be sad if you’re emailing me and you know it’ll probably get deleted, you should be glad. Adopting this kind of system means that I’m taking action on your email as soon as I can, I’m not letting it sit in my inbox for weeks until it’s irrelevant.
I also cleaned up my Gmail filters and deleted a bunch of junk (not the spam kind, the old, dusty attic kind). I know Gmail has a tagline “never delete emails again” or something like that, but seriously… Why waste space?
I use co.mments to track my comments, and it allows me to read further comments on a particular discussion without me visiting post again. And I do not receive email notifications every time somebody says something! What’s better is that I can remove the conversation that I am tracking anytime, anywhere!
Thanks for your comment pelf! That looks like a handy tool (I saw you use it in your recent blogging tools post). 🙂
I actually don’t mind getting comments on email. I have a separate email for all my internet dealings, which I use through Mail (default Mac email client) and then I use my personal email through the regular Gmail interface. It’s just dealing with the emails properly that is the key!