Fw: [Sigia-l] email management (not completely on topic)

[Livia Labate]

I had send this to Samantha, but since everyone sent to the list...

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Hi Samantha,

I read Mark's paper last November and was highly motivated to get my inbox
clean: It worked! I just got home and there are 56 emails, but I am going
through each of them and getting things answered to my best abilities and
transferring tasks and appointments to pertinent software and post-its
(hehehe nobody is perfect).

*How do you manage your inbox? Is it a to-do-list/tickler file, etc etc or
exclusively a repository (or something else?).

Nothing stays in the Inbox. That is rule #1. I do as described above and
after that, I have a filing system for the really relevant and worth-keeping
emails: One folder called 'people' with sub-folders called 'ppl_person-name'
and another folder called 'others', with subfolders like
'mails_registrations', 'mails_articlesfeedback',
'mails_livlab.com-feedback', 'mails_university', 'mails_rugby-team', and so
on... The rest of the emails is deleted.

*Is your system for list/action/document tracking the same online as
offline? If not, how do the systems differ?

I like to use the Palm-Outlook-Organizer triad. My digital information is on
Outlook and the portable part of it is redundant in the Palm. I also have a
small paper organizer that I walk around with and write little notes (which
I try my best to transfer to Outlook later), but mostly I use this one to
draw :)

*When it comes to your online info mngmt system, what element or elements
would you identify as successful/the thing that makes it work?

I think the success is in having your 'mental model' of how you need the
structure to be. The software I have used and use do NOT fit my
specifications of optimal solution, so I manage with what I have. As long as
I have the system in my mind I use the software as separate tools. Ideally
they would all be united in a single thing, but I haven't had time to
develop my own software yet :-P

Hope it helps a little.

Livia Labate