If you followed yesterday’s advice, your inbox is now relatively empty. There may be a few messages that have arrived since then, but I expect that it looks considerably different today, than it did yesterday. What you’re experiencing is more than a simple sense of pride that you are now living with a clear inbox. It’s really a new found sense of freedom that comes with the victory of winning the battle. For those of you that didn’t take my advice, or have yet to read that blog, you may want to go back and do so now. If you don’t, you’ll never know how the rest of us are feeling right now. Now that we’ve taken the first step, we have to move on and implement the next step of this process or we’ll quickly be back in the same shape were in before we started this whole process. So, let’s move into the next step in this process and setup our email workspace in a way that will make it easy to keep our inbox clean. (more…)

O.K. a fresh start, is a fresh start. Fresh starts sound good, but when push comes to shove, it’s a little hard to “pull the trigger” on them. I want to qualify this blog by telling you that it may be the hardest suggestion that I’m going to offer you. But, fresh is fresh, and fresh works, so I want to strongly urge you to do this. I’ve done it myself and it works! Here’s how it goes… give it a try. (more…)

An inbox is a term that has changed over the years. When I first went into business, I had an inbox. It was a wood tray whose internal measurement was slightly larger than an 8.5″ by 11″ sheet of paper. It just so happened that I had two similar boxes. One was labeled “Inbox” and the other was labeled “Outbox”. The “Inbox” held all those things that were awaiting my attention. There were bills to be paid, documents to be read/reviewed, mail to be opened… I think you know about the general idea here, even if you are young enough to have not ever had such a box on your desk. The “Outbox” held all those things that had already made their way through the “Inbox”, been handled appropriately (you know, documents read, junk mail skimmed and thrown into the trash, signatures placed where they were needed, mail opened, etc.). I don’t know about you but my “Inbox” had a tendency to have a significantly larger stack in it than the “Outbox”. But, that’s another story all together. Let’s move on. (more…)