It's Monday morning during December, which means I'm scrambling to dig out from a crazy weekend of multiple out-of-town swim meets, as well as a few fun holiday events that I attended. The level of "hustle and bustle" has definitely been kicked up a notch for me this month. When this happens, I tend to cling on for dear life to my tried and true methods for minimizing mental clutter. This helps me to keep my sanity in check, and my mental "To Do" list organized.
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Although I’m not an Inbox Zero purist, I do strive to keep a minimal number of emails in my email Inbox. Having a zillion messages smack me in the face when I open my email really freaks me out. It can get especially crazy with all of the holiday advertising that retailers bombard us with this time of year. As a result, I’m hyper-vigilant about managing email on a regular (read Daily) basis. A tool that I’ve found to be incredibly useful for managing email is Unroll.me. This free service organizes your emails to create a single daily summary email. It also enables you to easily unsubscribe from emails that you no longer wish to receive. Pure awesomeness!
If you worked through the Summer Shred Paper Declutter Challenge, you’re now familiar with the distinction between action and reference papers. I make the same distinction with email messages. Only the “action emails” remain in my Inbox. The reference emails that I decide to keep are either filed within an appropriate email folder, or are sent to Evernote for storage (you can learn more about email organization here).
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For me, it is all about scheduling whatever comes to mind that I need to do. If it is in the schedule, then I know I will do it. And if I can’t complete my list, I just re-schedule everything until it gets done. This gives me a feeling of control and calms the anxiety. (visiting from POBC)
I hear you Seana! Lists are awesome for getting things out of your head and capturing the “to do’s”, but the scheduling the To Do’s in the calendar is the only way it gets done!
Wow, great post! I’m going to have to look into Nozbe – it sounds like it might be able to replace a couple of apps I’m using now.
Janet, you’ll love it. It’s based on David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology 🙂