Treating Email like a Task List

After seeing the positive affects of my internet trimming experiment I decided to improve my email work flow so I could get even more free time out of my day.

The approach I took was to treat every email as a task that needs to be completed. Once the task is complete, delete it! This is the complete opposite of the "archive everything and forget about it" approach, but I personally believe a stock pile of tens of thousands of emails benefits your email provider's ability to serve ads more than your productivity.

I spent a couple hours going through my old emails deleting completed tasks. If a completed task had any important information that I may need I moved it into a project specific Dropbox folder before deleting.

I changed my default view from "inbox" to "all mail" so I can see tasks that I created (sent email) alongside the
tasks others created (received mail) all in one list.

Lastly I setup forwarding rules for my other email accounts to forward everything to my primary address.

After all the changes I have a single list of tasks to complete instead of thousands of forgotten emails scattered across multiple accounts.

Trimming the Fat

A week ago I started a little experiment, cut out all non essential internet usage. I said goodbye to Facebook, Twitter, blogs and anything else that was not directly related to getting work done got ditched. The result? I have hours of free time each day. I feel like I'm on holiday yet I'm still working. I have more energy, feel calm, relaxed and focussed. I feel good!