[vinceguidry]

I treat emails as open loops. I currently have four in my inbox representing three open loops. I consider "inbox zero" to be a counter-productive strategy focused on the wrong things.

I still do GTD-style triage, but I'm more willing to let stuff sit in queues. Inevitably I get sick of looking at it and do something about it, moving it into a backlog or working out a way to just do it right now.

But my life isn't one where more productivity would really net me all that many life improvements. Generally, if I can visualize a pathway to a real life improvement, motivation to get it done is not an issue.

My life generally consists of trying to solve really hard, complicated situations using mostly intuition. Staring at something sitting in a queue is often all I need to get that intuition going. "Why do I want this? How does this connect to other parts of my life?"

[mikegioia]

I completely agree with this. I manage my inbox the same way and stare at lists thinking that as well. Are you using any different email client right now?

[vinceguidry]

I just use Gmail. At work, I use the Office 365 web mail client. I absolutely hate it, but it gets the job done.

[mikegioia]

Yea me too. What I really want is something that looks like Trello where the first list is my Inbox, and then there are 2-3 other lists that I can make up like "This week", "Next week" etc.

[vinceguidry]

Sounds like a good candidate for paper and pen to me.

Software just complicates task lists.