I’m working on getting more and more organized, both at work and everywhere else. One of the things I just finished was emptying out the inboxes of my two main email addresses.
It’s weird, but it’s amazing the difference that this makes. Both of these inboxes had several hundred emails in them; anything that needed to be kept, I put into an appropriate folder so I could refer to it again. Most things did not need to be kept. The next thing I knew, I was done, and the inbox(es) were empty.
Now, as new mail comes in, if I can’t respond to or delete it immediately, it’s being put into the appropriate folder. The inbox stays empty.
I’m not sure why this simple thing makes such a difference in the level of organization I feel, or even in the area of potential stress (Do I have emails I should have answered? Are there important items somewhere in that backlog of email?), but it does. An empty inbox is the way to go.
Next will probably come organizing the actual desk; drawers, files and all. Yikes.
