Let me quickly explain.

Looking at my email in box sometimes, ok almost all of the time, made my mind race and blood pressure rise. I would scan the first couple of emails and be reminded of meetings I need to attend, meetings I should have attended and also thing that need to get done…yesterday. I start to panic…and the day just started.

I found a better way that works for me, and might help you out. Every morning I take my in box to zero and here is how I do it.

As I scan my emails I move them into one of the 4 emails folders.

• Done – Any email that was a follow up and requires no further action.
• Todo – Something that requires an action.
• Follow up – I either drag an email to this folder or when sending an email, that requires follow up, I will bcc myself on the email. I have a rule in my email clients to move all bcc emails, from me, to this folder.
• Info – This could be announcement a date change to a meeting or something that I would like to find fast. I normally go to this folder and move older items to the done folder.

That is it, so simple it is crazy.

When I am scanning my email and moving them to the correct action folder there are 2 more things that I do:

• Take action on emails that take less than 2 minutes to complete.
• Delegate, before moving to the todo folder and bcc’ing myself for follow up.

It feels great to move something to the "done" folder.

I do want to point out these practices came from ideas I found in the GTD book and from the 43 folders blog.