Any day now I am going to start the GTD (Getting Things Done) system. In preparation for the adoption of GTD I have cleared my desk and also my e-mail inbox. I had planned to file all 342 e-mails in my inbox into the relevant folders but the task was too massive so I just created an ‘archive inbox’ and dumped the lot in there. In six months time I will probably just delete the lot. So, for the first time in ages I actually had a clear inbox, and so far each day I have kept it pretty clear either by deleting, moving or doing something to each e-mail. Deleting is the most fun, moving is OK too but actually having to do something is hard work! Generally I leave all the ‘action’ e-mails in my inbox during the day and then delete or move them once the action is complete. In this way the inbox acts like a sort of ‘to do’ list. Sometimes though it is really hard not to let an e-mail lie around for a few days and before you know it the inbox is growing again. If this happens I have a plan – move any action e-mail that still needs attention to an ‘Action’ folder. The key aim you see (in true GTD style) is to keep the decks clear – to focus on the now and not let old information drag you down. My excellent co-worker (I’m using that term now rather than colleague because I prefer it), Chris Hayford is a bit of a techie and he has set-up rules for automatically handling and filing e-mails – this means he can get all e-mails from a certain source (e.g. Amazon) or a certain client to go to a certain folder to be read/acted on later. That’s probably a step too far for me at the moment but I do think that some form of rules based system is likely to be useful in the future, but it needs to be simple and reliable.