From the course: Time Management Fundamentals
Applying what, when, where processing to email
- The system of what, when, where processing applies to email as easily as it does to your physical inbox. You open one item at a time from your inbox and answer the questions. What is the next step? When will it be done? And where is its home? Your ultimate goal for processing email is the same as your other gathering points. Bring it to zero, meaning completely empty at least once per week. It may take some time to reach this goal, but it's very possible. You may need to break a few unproductive habits to do it. For example, some keep emails in their inbox to serve as reminders of unresolved to-dos. Some keep mail in their inbox because they're worried about losing them. Others depend on bolded unread emails to determine what still needs to be done. These habits encourage switch tasking, the primary cause of lost time, mistakes and stress. So to start, focus on the total count of emails in your inbox, ignoring whether they're unread. How many emails do you have in your inbox right now? No matter how high your number is, I'll cover how you can carefully and responsibly get it down to zero.
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