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by visitor4rmindia 5910 days ago
I've been using David Allen's "Getting Things Done" methodology for about three years now and I find it works really well.

When dealing with mail the principle I follow is to use the inbox purely as an inbox and not a substitute "to-do" list.

What that means is I process each message, one at a time, starting from the oldest. I don't skip ahead to "interesting" mails. If the mail can be handled in under two minutes, I just do it. If not, I create a related task (in EMacs org-mode (which is utterly fantastic but any old text file with categories can be used)) and handle that outside the mailing system.

The mail itself gets filed into a specific category archive folder for reference. My inbox is almost always empty which is a GREAT feeling for some reason.

EDIT: Thanks for the link to sup btw. I use mutt but the 'search' feature seems tempting.