Streamlining my Gmail Inbox

As part of my drive to "Get Things Done -GTD" (read earlier post on this), I tried yet another handy Lifehacker tip: Empty your Inbox with Gmail and the Trusted Trio.

In a nutshell, the article exhorts trying to attain an Inbox with zero mail in it, creating a Trusted Trio of folders called "FOLLOW UP", "HOLD" and "ARCHIVE" and funnelling all mail into those folders. All mail in "FOLLOW UP" are mail that have to be tackled in the near future, that can't be done in 2 minutes (if it could be answered in two minutes, just do it already!). For "HOLD" mails, you're waiting on replies from others, or they contain information about events that have yet to come to pass or. Since Gmail already has a built in Archive function, we use that as the archive folder.

I did the following:

1. Searched my mail box for all mail digests that I get on a regular basis, and for which there is no archival need. These included NYT.com news digests, Friendster updates, etc. Clicked Delete - voila! My mailbox was down to a healthy 3550 messages. My system felt cleaner already.

2. Created the labels "_FOLLOW UP" and "_HOLD", with the 'underscores' to place them on top of the labels list. Also made "Good to know" and "Readings" labels to classify mail containing interesting/useful information (discounts, subject guides etc) as well as mailed interesting articles.

3. Looked through my still-cluttered inbox back along a timeline of a couple of weeks. Identified items that fell under the above labels, and classified them as such.

4. Looked at "Starred" list, labeled mails accordingly then de-starred them. Now my "Starred" list contains important/interesting email that doesn't fall under any other category.

5. Selected all mail in inbox, clicked "Archive" and hey presto! My Inbox was completely empty!

It felt a little strange at first staring at an empty inbox, after more than a year of starting using Gmail and having thousands of mail in it all the time. Oh well, I could try this scheme out and see if it really unclutters my mental slate and boosts my productivity by reducing the amount of email I have to face. Else, there's always the "Unarchive" button, though I doubt I'll go that route.

Certainly, there're those who might argue that with the amount of free storage available (6349 MB and counting..), there really is no need to Archive mail in Gmail. I used to think that too but after having done the above, an empty inbox does seem pretty elegant and liberating. I'll try and check back a while later to see if this has enhanced my life.

Now to tackle my cluttered OS desktop...;-)