ZTD Habit 2: Process

Recently I posted my new twist on the excellent GTD system, Zen To Done (ZTD): The Ultimate Simple Productivity System. This is the second in a series of posts exploring each of the 10 Habits.

2 process.

Habit: make quick decisions on things in your inbox, do not put them off.

Letting stuff pile up is procrastinating on making decisions. If you process your inboxes, making quick decisions and putting things where they belong, things don’t pile up. Process your inboxes at least once a day, and more frequently if needed.

First, minimize your inboxes. Every place you have to go to check your messages or to read your incoming information is an inbox, and the more you have, the harder it is to manage everything. Cut the number of inboxes you have down to the smallest number possible for you to still function in the ways you need to.

List all the ways you receive information, evaluate each to see if it gives you value, and find ways to combine or eliminate inboxes. If something’s not giving you value, consider eliminating it from your life. See if you can go a week without missing it. For all the rest, see if you can combine multiple information streams into one inbox. For example, how many places in your home do incoming papers get placed? Have one inbox at home for all mail, papers from work, school papers, phone notes, computer printouts, schedules, and more. Have four email services? See if you can forward them all to one service. The fewer inboxes you have, the better. Aim for 4-7 inboxes if possible.

Next, master your inboxes. This stage will sound familiar to my long-time readers, but it should be covered here: Don’t allow your inboxes to overflow. This will create a huge backlog of stuff for you to go through, and it will definitely stress you out. Instead, become the master of your inboxes.

Check and process your inboxes once a day. For some inboxes, you may need to check more than once (I check my email every hour), but don’t check constantly and obsessively. That just wastes your time and cuts into your productivity and real life. But don’t check less than once a day, because otherwise you’ll allow it to pile up. Piles are your enemy.

Here’s how to process:

Process it from the top down, making quick and immediate decisions. Start with the top item in your inbox, and make an immediate decision. Don’t skip over it or put it back in or delay the decision.
Delete. If you don’t need it, trash it. Make this your first choice.
Delegate. Are you the person who should be doing this? If not, send it to someone else and get it off your plate.
Do do it immediately. If the task will take 2 minutes or less, just do it rather than adding it to your to-do list.
Defer it for later. If it will take more than 2 minutes, add it immediately to your to-do list to do later.
File it. If it’s just something you need for reference, file it immediately. Don’t use a Miscellaneous or To Be Filed file — that’s just putting off the decision. Don’t let your things to be filed pile up — just file it right away.
In all cases, don’t leave the item in your inbox. Delete or file it. Work your way down through each item until your inbox is empty. Note: if you have hundreds of items in your inbox, it might be good to toss them all into a folder to be processed later (and schedule a couple hours to do that), and then start this process with all new items from that point on.
Repeat this process, to keep your inboxes empty. If you’ve minimized the number of inboxes you have, this shouldn’t be too hard. Celebrate when your inbox is empty! It’s a wonderful feeling. Remember: Don’t check them all day long — schedule your processing time — and definitely don’t have instant notification on.

See Getting Your Email to Empty and Keeping Your Desk Clear for more.

See also:

ZTD Habit 2: Process

Recently I posted my new twist on the excellent GTD system, Zen To Done (ZTD): The Ultimate Simple Productivity System. This is the second in a series of posts exploring each of the 10 Habits.

2 process.

Habit: make quick decisions on things in your inbox, do not put them off.

Here’s how to process:

Process it from the top down, making quick and immediate decisions. Start with the top item in your inbox, and make an immediate decision. Don’t skip over it or put it back in or delay the decision.
Delete. If you don’t need it, trash it. Make this your first choice.
Delegate. Are you the person who should be doing this? If not, send it to someone else and get it off your plate.
Do do it immediately. If the task will take 2 minutes or less, just do it rather than adding it to your to-do list.
Defer it for later. If it will take more than 2 minutes, add it immediately to your to-do list to do later.
File it. If it’s just something you need for reference, file it immediately. Don’t use a Miscellaneous or To Be Filed file — that’s just putting off the decision. Don’t let your things to be filed pile up — just file it right away.
In all cases, don’t leave the item in your inbox. Delete or file it. Work your way down through each item until your inbox is empty. Note: if you have hundreds of items in your inbox, it might be good to toss them all into a folder to be processed later (and schedule a couple hours to do that), and then start this process with all new items from that point on.
Repeat this process, to keep your inboxes empty. If you’ve minimized the number of inboxes you have, this shouldn’t be too hard. Celebrate when your inbox is empty! It’s a wonderful feeling. Remember: Don’t check them all day long — schedule your processing time — and definitely don’t have instant notification on.

See Getting Your Email to Empty and Keeping Your Desk Clear for more.

See also:

Posted on 17 April 2007 in GTD, ZTD |
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Comments (18)

rob Says:

April 18th, 2007, 16:42 pm

Do you break down items from your inbox processing into projects or not - I can’t see this step in your post but surely it’s needed. If a had an email asking me to arrange for example a wedding I could not just put this down as a to do item - too complicated and too many steps. By assigning projects and breaking down into next actions things get simpler (or more Zen if you like). I’d appreciate your thoughts on this…

if i’ve double posted apologies..

Leo Says:

April 18th, 2007, 17:15 pm

Hi Rob … You’re right, I didn’t include this, and it was a bit of an internal debate on whether I should or not. In short, yes, I would recommend that you put a project like the wedding onto a projects list, and then take the “Next Action” (as in GTD) from that project and put it on your context list. The Next Action, of course, is the very next physical action necessary to move the project forward (list 10 ideas for a wedding them, for example).

The reason I didn’t include this in the system is that I wanted to keep it intentionally simple. I think managing projects is something that can be dealt with later. But it is an important part of the process, so perhaps I should have included it.

Aaron Griffin Says:

April 23rd, 2007, 4:55 am

Out of curiosity, in step 6, File It, what type of filing methods do you use. The GTD community takes great pains to discuss collections and list management techniques, but this is one thing I never see. There is a science to organizing reference material that I don’t seem to grasp all that well.

Even more so, in the realm of digitally collected data (i.e. email, reference links, etc) there are hundreds of options. I don’t have a clean methodology that doesn’t increase my inbox count too much, and am curious as to what you’d suggest.

For completeness, I currently use gmail for a lot of things, when I read an email, I “star” it to basically “add it to my inbox”. From there, I either process it into list form at a later date, or keep it as reference. I used to jot notes in google notebook, but that didn’t seem to fit too well. I also keep lines in del.icio.us, which may or may not be useful to any given task.

So, I ask you - what’s the best way to combine physical and digital “reference capture” into some easy to use system in order to complement the actionable items.

Leo Says:

April 23rd, 2007, 5:49 am

Hi Aaron … great question. I don’t claim to have the perfect filing system, but here’s what works for me (I may do a more in-depth post on this):

1) physical: at home and work, I use simple manila folders with simple labels. I always have a supply of each so I can make a folder for a new topic easily. Anyway, I use a simple alphabetical system, so things are easy to find. No need to make it complicated.

2) digital: I favor the gmail philosophy of archiving everything. I don’t use tags a lot (except “reply” which I use if I can’t reply to something right away). I just archive or delete. Search is so powerful on gmail that I don’t have a problem finding anything. I don’t use my hard drive much anymore, but I do have an “inbox” and an “action” and an “archive” folder on my drive (in the “archive” folder on my hard drive, I break it down into subcategories, but don’t go too deep if I can avoid it). Mostly I use Google docs for word or spreadsheet needs, and use the archive feature there too. Simpler is better!

Laura Says:

April 26th, 2007, 8:59 am

I agree, the gmail archiving feature is so powerful for me! It allows me to not have to make any decisions, I just archive everything. It makes me feel much better knowing that nothing is gone and I can always search for it later.
I do have separate labels for my clients so that I’m able to see all of our correspondence at a glance. This is a really easy system because it requires no thought- if an email is in any way related to a client I just stick that label on it.