Random musings: Clean Out Your Inbox Week

Today is the first day of Clean Out Your Inbox Week. Last year I just happened to decide to blog about cleaning out your inbox during Clean Out Your Inbox Week but this year I actually planned on it.

I've let my work and personal email accounts get out of hand again. My work account mainly because I was out of the office last week and probably have a few hundred emails waiting for me and personal just because I've gotten lazy. I currently have 92 emails between all of my personal accounts. That's really not too bad...I can deal with those on an individual basis.

Here's an excerpt from part 1 of last year's series:

I didn't realize when I decided what I was going to blog about today, that it's clean your inbox week! So, I'm going to share a few tips that I've picked up along the way. Actually 4 tips, known as the 4 Ds. I've seen these Ds in a couple of different orders, but I think this one is the best.

Delete - if at all possible, delete any emails immediately

Delegate - if you can't delete it, give it to somebody else to take care of if you can, whether it's an assistant, a co-worker or your boss

Do - if you haven't deleted it or delegated it, then do whatever you have to do to get it out of your inbox, whether it's to reply or forward it. If it can be completed in less than 2 minutes

Defer - if you haven't deleted or delegated this piece of email and it's going to take more than 2 minutes to do it, then defer it. But don't just leave it hanging out in your inbox. Instead schedule it as a task that needs to be completed

I'm going to share one D each day, starting today and ending on Thursday.

Delete!

If at all possible, delete every email as you get it. Don't let any email just sit in your inbox. If you don't need it, get rid of it! And unsubscribe from any subscriptions that you don't read. I do this periodically.

If you currently have a lot of emails in your inbox, create a folder and move all of your emails to that folder. I have a folder for my personal emails called "Need to go through". I moved all of my personal emails into it last year because I had so many. Go through the folder everyday and clean it out as best you can. I didn't do this part very well...I still have a few hundred from last year but I'm pretty sure I can delete most of them since I've had no need for them in the past year. But more importantly, don't let your inbox fill up again. The goal is zero emails in your inbox! By the end of the week, I'll have zero emails in all of my inboxes.

Tomorrow we'll talk about delegating the emails that you can't delete because some action must be taken, whether it's to reply or forward. Or if it's about something else that you must do.