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by petesergeant 1539 days ago
The solution I have pulled out of GTD is that once a day I clear everything out of my inbox, and anything that needs a reply gets put into a todo list. Slightly later in the day, I groom that Todo list, and work out which items I will today, and set aside 30m in which to do those. If there's an item in there that will take a significant investment in time -- including a certain email -- then I'll make an appointment on my calendar to do it.

I'll respond to interesting email that comes in during the day if I feel like it / if I'm bored, but knowing that once a day I do a complete clear-out is helpful to me
1 comments
laurentb 1539 days ago
I agree with this, email (professional at least) inbox should be treated as its own todo list.

anything in the inbox is something to action, anything you don't need to action personally, archive / tag or move to a folder and be done with it.

If it's something to action then at least gmail has a snooze button and I've found that to be super helpful.

My rule of thumb is that I should not have more than 30 items in my inbox. If there's more then clearing the inbox takes priority over anything else (bar key meetings).

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