Over at 43 Folders, Merlin has posted a quick way for you to totally clear out your email inbox. It brings to mind some of the Getting Things Done methodology to clearing the inbox, but it’s a hundred times faster.
Here’s how he does it:
1. Open your email program and create a new folder called “DMZ”
2. Go to your email inbox and Select All
a. You might alternatively choose all email older than n days
3. Drag those emails from your inbox into the DMZ folder
4. Go, and sin no more.
The key to this is you do eventually have to deal with the emails. But this gets them off your mind immediately so you can focus on something else.
I’ll admit, I once tried this a year or so ago with emails dating over a week or so old. I never went back and dealt with them AND, nothing bad happened. Which told me then and there I was holding on to stuff I didn’t really need. They were searchable if someone had called me on something.
Technorati Tags: gtd, Outlook, email, productivity
