Joe Robens posted something quite a while ago outlining how he uses email. I’m always a fan of these posts because it gives me an insight into how serious operators (like Joe) manage the flow of opportunities, collaboration and ‘stuff’ through their lives. I’m a fairly big fan of the GTD methodology myself and have worked hard over the last few years to get better and better at managing my inbox, but I must admit at times it gets away from me. This past 2 weeks has been no different.
Things at Yammer have been heating up as we approach our Yammer On Tour events, as well as a number of awesome things happening with our clients. I also took a few days out to watch Rose swim to Rottnest Island. All of that is a recipe for an overflowing inbox. My personal inbox is in a state of disrepair at the moment – something i’ll need to fix this weekend.
So, reading Joe’s advice I’ve taken a few extra little hints with me to manage the inflow. Here’s a few things I’m going to try.
1) First up, i’ll be removing _every_ notification message I can from my stream and placing it in a label. I’ve tried doing this before, but to no avail. I’ll go through my inbox today and try to remove the things I like to read, but add noise, into another place.
2) I really love the idea Joe raises of moving any message I’m CC’ed on into another label. This makes sense as he outlines it, but I wonder how many times people would email me with a CC and still be expecting a reply? It can’t hurt to give it a try. If you need a response from me, address your email TO me.
3) Likewise, If I need a response from someone I’ll now be placing their name in the ‘TO’ box.
That’s it really. What did you think of Joe’s post? How do you use email?
The Squiggly Line 
Thanks for the kudos Steve 🙂
Pleasure mate, thanks for your post. I’m already feeling lighter having created my CC rule to move those emails out of the inbox. Awesome.
I sent Joe’s post out to my whole team as a “training and development” exercise. Great advice from Joe Bloggs.
The other thing I did was I banned three letters. F, Y and I. My most hated TLA (three letter acronym). It’s lazy and it seeks to avoid responsibility. i.e. I told you about that so now it’s your issue
Yeah, FYI is a funny one. Things that are FYI are, like Joe says, probably better suited to an enterprise social network or other digital medium.
Glad you sent Joe’s post around, it’s a ripper!
i just love blog authors that are very intelligent like you ?~. .: