How to achieve Inbox Zero with GTD and Windows Mobile

Nowadays, managing email is a difficult mission. Every day, we receive dozens or hundreds of emails. Managing this amount of information requires a lot of discipline if we do not want to invest more time than the necessary. We must be prepared for “ignoring” some of this information since it is not possible to control everything and, for sure, part of this information is not really a must-read for our daily work.

Being productive does not mean reading all your email, but achieving success in the projects that matters.

However, it is a good idea to set the goal “maintaining the inbox with zero mails“. This is a good thing because it helps us to reduce the anxiety caused by seeing how many unprocessed elements we have. The task of emptying our mail inbox must be done as quickly and effectively as possible and sometimes we do not have enough time if we just use our PC.

The advantage of doing this using a Windows Mobile device and Needian – Organize in 1,2,3 is that we can process our email at any time: at the bus, at the metro, or having breakfast. In this way, we can take advantage of downtime.

For collecting our work from email with Needian – Organize in 1,2,3, we can follow this simple four steps:

1. Make a general review of the inbox. Reading the subjects we can see quickly which of them are urgent, which are reference materials, which to delegate, and which we should delete.
2. Delete anything that is not clearly needed: Needian – Organize in 1,2,3 lets you move the mail list with your finger tapping in those you want to delete. Later, you just need to confirm with the delete button and all the trash will disappear from your inbox.
3. Process those emails which require a quick and simple response. Notice that in Needian – Organize in 1,2,3 just teplying them means that they will be archived in the “processed” folder. In this way, you will be closer to Inbox Zero! This rule represents a adaptation to mobile devices of the “less than 2 minutes” rule of GTD.
4. Process those emails which require a time-consuming response. We must convert them into tasks or appointments. You can also classify these actions in a project or just assign them to person, tool or place. This will decrease the number of mails in your inbox since Needian – Organize in 1,2,3 moves processed emails to the selected project folder or to the “processed” folder if no project has been assigned. You can also delegate tasks when needed, or, if you receive documentation related to a project, you can assign it to the project as reference, so that you can check it later from the desktop.

Following these simples rules, you can achieve Inbox Zero easier. Next step, review pending work and select tasks for today (see our next posts).

How do you manage your email from your Windows Mobile Device?

Tell us your tips and tricks.