It’d be helpful if you had your boss’s permission, especially if you work in an office, but I guarantee you you will be more focused and productive the rest of the afternoon.

Or, you can be proactive about this and do it over your lunch break if you have a conscience (or employer) issue with doing this during work hours. You might even get to use your couch or a bed as an added bonus.

(And yes, that’s my adorable toddler daughter. She’ll probably hate me for this someday)

As a follow-up to my “empty your inbox” folder, I thought I’d respond to a question in the comments with another post.

I struggle with how to file things for my work email because there are so many moving pieces that require attention. I’d be interested to hear what you have as your folder structure for filing things.

Everything useful I know about e-mail management I learned from Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero. Learn this. Over time this has evolved for me.

His basic folder structure initially translated for me as:

1. TRASH (the most important folder. put stuff here with impunity and empty regularly.)
2. Needs Response (To do)
3. Hold (waiting for something, or need to keep around short term)
4. Waiting For (a delegated to do that is waiting for someone else)
5. Archive

Over time, I added a few folders to get something basically like this:

1. TRASH
2. Needs Response
3. Hold
4. Waiting For
5. Archive
6. Newsletters (subscriptions)
7. Flyers (subscriptions that are trying to sell me something that for some reason, I haven’t unsubscribed from…)
8. Social notifications (twitter, facebook, and everything else that notifies me of activity on my sites go here)
9. Blog comments
10. Lists
11. Receipts (from itunes and monthly subscriptions)
12. Reports (from different auto-notifiers, usually server related)
13. (and on) Various project related folders that stick around short term.

This is probably a little bloated, but it works very well for me.

An interesting question came up in my “empty your inbox” post.

Similar to a messy inbox, my new distraction is unread tweets in tweetie. How do you handle twitter? Do you put it off until certain times or keep up with it all day?

Simple answer: I don’t. Twitter is an information luxury to me. You don’t NEED to keep up with it.

If you do (for some reason) want to keep up with a certain set people, a certain topic, etc, download TweetDeck, and set up some searches and groups. Easy.

For awhile, before I realized that I didn’t HAVE to keep up with Twitter, I had several searches and groups set up that kept me organized:

1. A search for my username. This replaced my “replies” column as it would also show when anyone mentioned me outside of a reply
2. A search for the topic du jour. This changed from time to time.
3. A group called “close”. This was a very stripped down group of people whose tweets I (for whatever reason) wanted to keep an eye on.
4. A group called “local”. This was a group of people I was likely to encounter in “real life” who would probably ask me if I saw their tweet. I paid closest attention to these.

Hope that’s helpful.

You will probably not question the fact that e-mail causes you stress. Anecdotal evidence, nascent research, and my own personal experience is saying that it is currently one of the greatest causes of stress in the workplace. I have a suggestion.

It’s not the email itself that causes the stress, it’s the fact that you don’t handle it correctly. I have a few simple tips for you being master over your inbox, rather than your inbox mastering you. And trust me, I probably get more email than you.

Cardinal rule: You MUST keep your inbox empty.

1. Set up a filter for, or unsubscribe from all of your email subscriptions, and any other service that automatically emails you. Never let it hit your inbox. You don’t need it.

2. Process your email at regular intervals. Depending on the quantity you receive and the frequency you receive it, spending 10 minutes at the top of the hour processing your email can go a long way. If you can deal with it in 2 minutes or less, deal with it immediately, then file it or trash it. If you can’t, put it on a separate to-do list, and file it. Get it out of your inbox.

3. Delete it. You probably don’t need it.

4. Feel free to ignore your email. Delete it or file it. If it’s that important, they’ll e-mail you back or call.

5. If the only way to empty your inbox RIGHT NOW is to ignore 20 (or 200!) “important” emails, do it. File them in a “to do later” folder and get on with life.

Enjoy your empty inbox. Your will breathe more easily and you will find your pulse returning to normal. You will also find that you are far more productive (because you are focused) with other tasks, leading to you actually getting to those 20 e-mails you put off in your “to do later” folder.

But most importantly, empty your inbox, NOW. Seriously, empty it.

If you’re lucky enough to be able to work at home, don’t make it just a little mini office away from the office. Life’s too short to replicate the creativity and soul-sucking office environment in your own home. Work in your PJ’s, work odd hours, play music at high-volume, have a movie on while you work—do anything just to remind yourself that by being at home your life is a little less like Dilbert everyday.

Otherwise what’s the point?

Great post Mike.

Christian Warren posted about it on TUAW. Ahhh TUAW, not only do I like working on you, I like reading you.