Mastering Inbox Management: A Structured Approach to Task Organization

This week, how to process your task manager’s inbox quickly and effectively so you can get focused on what needs to be done.

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Script | 336

Hello, and welcome to episode 336 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

One issue that pops up regularly in my coaching programme is an overwhelming inbox. There are too many unclear items left to fester and fill up space, with no clear pathway to dealing with whatever needs to be done. 

Now, it’s true that you need to collect things. If you’re not collecting your commitments and ideas, you soon find yourself forgetting to do the important things you have committed to. However, collecting is just the first part of a three-part process. You also need to organise what you collect and then do the work. 

There are no shortcuts around this. These are the three principles of task management. Collect whatever needs to be collected, organise what you collect and then do the work. 

This is something I have learned the hard way. I’ve collected thousands of items over the years, and in my early days, before I had learned the basic principles, that meant my inbox filled up and just became an overwhelming mess. It was a place I never wanted to visit because it just reminded me of how unproductive and disorganised I was. 

I know those basic principles now: I collect stuff, regularly organise what I collect, and then do the work. 

Today’s podcast is about organising what you collected. I will tell you how to quickly clear your inbox, sort out the important from the unimportant, and, more importantly, get comfortable deleting stuff that is low in importance. 

Oh, and before I forget, Friday this week—that’s the 6th of September— sees the opening session of my Ultimate Productivity Workshop. 

This is your chance to learn the fundamental principles and put them into practice so you can become a master of time management and productivity. 

There are just a few places left, so if you want to become better organised, more productive, and in control of your time, join the workshop today. Details for the event are in the show notes and on my website, Carl Pullein.com.

Okay, on with the show, which means it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Jeff. Jeff asks, “Hi Carl, I am really struggling with my inbox. I put a lot of stuff in there, from ideas to things my wife asks me to do and emails that need a response. 

Each day, I feel I am collecting thirty or more things, and then it takes forever to clear the inbox. I hate doing it, so I don’t. And, of course, that just makes things worse. What can I do to make keeping my inbox manageable. 

Hi Jeff,

Thank you for your question. 

The good news is there are a few changes you can make that will help to reduce the overwhelm caused by an overloaded inbox. 

Let’s first deal with the three questions to ask when you process your inbox. These three questions will clarify what you have and help you to determine if you really need to do them or not. 

The first question is, “Do I need to do it?”

This is designed to clear tasks that have already been done or are no longer relevant because events have moved on. 

You will often add a task like “Find out if Margo has all the documents she needs.” Later that day, Margo may ask you a question about the documents. You now know she has them. The task can be deleted or modified if the question requires you to do something. 

Or you may have been asked by someone to do something only for them to tell you later that the task no longer needs to be done. 

These can all be deleted. 

Similarly, you may have added tasks to look up something or find out more about something, only to look at the task later and wonder what you were thinking. You are no longer interested in the idea. Again, delete these. 

If the task still needs to be done, then move on to the next question, which is: 

What do I need to do?

This question concerns properly defining the task. It’s not good to have a task that simply says, “Tony script.” 

That might have meant something to you when you added it to your inbox, but if you do not need to do the task for a week or two, when the task comes back you’ll be unsure what needs to be done. Make it clear. 

Rewrite the task as something like, “Send Tony the amended voice-over script.” This makes sense. If you are sending Tony many different scripts, you would add the name of the amended script to send so there is no confusion. 

Another type of task to watch out for is the “follow-up” or “chase” task. These are often not tasks. They may be vehicles for completing a task. For example, if you asked Roger for a copy of the script to send to Tony, the task is not really to chase Roger. 

The task is to get a copy of the script to send to Tony. Until you have that script in your procession the task is not complete. Adding another task to chase Roger duplicates the original task. 

Instead, after asking Roger for the task, make a note that you asked Roger for it, add a date you asked, and then reschedule the task. 

Every task in your task manager needs an action verb attached to it, such as call, write, read, review, design, sketch, reply, etc. If a task does not have an action verb, it has not been properly defined. 

You will find that adding a verb helps you to estimate how long something will take. 

For those tasks that are difficult to estimate the time it will take, you can use the “start, continue, finish” method. 

I use this method for a lot of project tasks. For example, when I was writing Your Time Your Way, every Monday to Friday, I had a repeating task that said, “Continue writing book”. This meant I could decide how much time I had available to write the book and not worry about the task itself. 

I knew I was never going to finish writing the book in one day, it was the kind of task that jut needed to done little by little. So, I allocated ninety-minutes a day, five days a week and repeated that for six months. That got the book done. 

The third question is: When am I going to do it?

This is where most other time management and productivity systems go wrong. Establishing whether you need to do the task and defining what needs to be done is pretty universal in the productivity world. Yet, it doesn’t matter how well you define a task if you don’t have time to do it. 

Once you commit yourself to a task, you need to know you have time to do it. That means asking, when are you going to do it? 

How do you do that? Open up your calendar and your task manager and have them side by side. Some task managers can show you your calendar at the same time. Todoist, Tick Tick, and in a couple of weeks, Apple Reminders will do that for you. 

What you are doing is looking to see where you have gaps in your schedule for doing the work. 

Now, the task could be grouped with other similar tasks. Doing your expenses, for instance would be an admin task. Responding to an email would come under your communications. 

But, some tasks may be too big and require a few hours to do. The question then becomes will you do in one go or split it up? 

Your calendar will guide you. You will be able to see where you have time; if not, you can decide whether something else needs to be rescheduled for you to do the task by the date it’s due. 

Now, when you start going through your inbox and asking these questions, you will be slow. Remember when you learned to ride a bicycle? You didn’t jump on the bike and go. There was a slow process of learning and building muscle memory. 

The same will happen when processing your inbox. It will be slow at first as you’re building your mental muscle memory. 

I’ve been asking these three questions for years. It takes me very little time now, yet it was a slow process when I first began. The only option you have is to stick with it. As time goes on, you will get faster and faster. 

You will also pick up the patterns. The different requests you get will fall into similar groups, which helps you quickly decide what something is and how long it will take. 

Be patient and follow the process. 

And… Do not be afraid to delete stuff. If it’s important, it will come back. 

If you are using the Time Sector System, you have a bit of an advantage. With the Time Sector System, the only tasks that matter are the ones you need to do this week. Anything else can be moved to your Next Week, This Month, Next Month or Long-term and on Hold folders. You can decide when you will do those tasks when you next do a weekly planning session. 

So there you go, Jeff. 

This is a process game. The more you follow the process, the faster you become. You also get comfortable deleting and delegating tasks. The goal is not to accumulate tasks; it’s the reverse. The goal is always to eliminate. The less you have to do this week, the more focused you will be and the more flexibility you have for dealing with the unknowns that will inevitably come in. 

I hope that has helped answer your question. Thank you so much for sending it. 

Don’t forget Friday is the start of September’s ULTIMATE PRODUCTIVITY WORKSHOP. You can register by going to my website. If you are already registered, I will be sending you the workbook in the next day or two. 

Thank you for listening and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.