CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Email Overload: Download a Free Copy of David Allen's Email Rules

Lifehacker: "David Allen, author of Getting Things Done and inspiration for a lot of posts 'round these parts, gives away a free four-page PDF at his website that covers his basic principals for keeping email organized."

8 comments:

Dave said...

Email clutter is a problem I have and I see on a lot of computer screens around me, especially being on a highly used dlist. Usually I just delete emails if they are not something I have to do later and keep them if its something I will have to do or want to know in the future, not the best system. Unfortunately gmail doesn't have folders and I am not a huge user of the "labels".

Anonymous said...

This is really hard to keep up. I've been trying really hard to keep my inbox at zero but sometimes I really feel the need to just leave something there so I won't forget to do it or read it. This kind of stuff is quite the "easier said than done" example though the more you do it the easier it becomes as it isn't on your to-do list anymore, it just becomes a "way of life."

Anonymous said...

I tend to have the same problem as Naomi, where I'll leave email unread so I'll pay attention and respond. But at the same time, it tends to pile up and then I forget about it. It kind of bothers me that the free copy of his rules requires a sign up though- I'm much less inclined to take a look at them.

jeannie_yun said...

having unread emails in my inbox just drives me completely insane. But I will tolerate read emails in the inbox to remind myself to do later. i just can't stand seeing INBOX (1). It's somewhat unbearable for me.

Anonymous said...

I HATE that squirel mail does not have a delete all of a check all to delete. It drives me insane. I usually do not use folders and I just save my important emails and delete all of my emails or have a setting to save them for a month however Squirrel mail is very limiting for organization and deletion of emails unless I can't figure it out or something. Right now my mail looks like INBOX (742) I probably should have read some of those emails however a lot of worthless emails are sent out at CMU.

Anonymous said...

This is a method i have had since freshman year of high school. It really keeps "email stress" to a minimum, and my efficiency at processing it all quite high. The only issue i sometimes run into is when processing too fast and may delete something i meant to transfer to a file or reread.

Anonymous said...

I swear, Holcomb is just going to make us open our emails in class one day and delete them all.

There are so many systems for managing email inboxes, but I've never found one that is really efficient in the long term. Right now I have tons of archive folders and many read messages in my inbox. I immediately delete things I don't need as soon as they get to my inbox. There is plenty of clutter created by email that I once needed but is now useless, though.

Anonymous said...

I agree with what dave said. I am also not big user of labels.

E-mail Set-up Rules