Organising your email with a task or project manager

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In yesterday’s episode, I was talking about email and how you should organize it so there’s not that much stuff in your inbox.

And the reason for that is basically for the loss of focus that you all have.

I’ve been getting a lot of messages as to, well, how do you do it?

And I did explain basically the basics of it.

The thing is, you should move your emails out of your inbox.

And the way to do that is literally try to figure out what the email is about.

If it’s an email that you can actually just reply to within like a minute or two, just reply to it, get rid of it, archive it, delete it, whatever.

If it’s specific to a project, then obviously you need to put it in your project management tool or your task manager if it’s something that you need to deal with later on.

Because the point is to get rid of stuff from your inbox.

I’ve been, I talked about this before, but in the old days, you used to have an inbox on your desk And people used to come across your office.

In fact, this was my job when I worked at the bank.

And people used to put stuff in my inbox.

And if I left it for a day, it was just getting full on full.

And if I came in the next day, it would just annoy me because I saw all this stuff that I had to deal with.

But if it was, and I fixed it by actually putting, firstly, the first thing I did was move the inbox and put it behind me so I didn’t see it so I could focus on the thing that I was doing.

And that’s effectively the same for email.

I mean, putting it behind you, you still got to deal with it.

So I actually had a different system.

I won’t go into it.

But with email, it’s basically the same inbox.

So you’re getting a ton of stuff in your inbox, but you don’t want to see it.

So I put it behind me.

But what you should do with those emails, as I said, the first thing is to reply to it if it’s like within a minute or two.

It’s kind of the GTD method with tasks.

If it’s something to do with a project that you’re working on, put it in your project management tool.

And a lot of people are talking about, well, I don’t use a project management tool.

Well, if it’s something that you need to deal with later on, put it in your task manager.

Now, it could be any project management tool or any task manager.

I mean, Apple have one called reminders that you can use, which is a task manager.

You can use things.

I use things for my personal stuff.

I use Basecamp for my working with clients, client projects, basically.

I started using Notion as well for specific things, kind of like a mini CRM.

I actually made a video about that a couple of days ago last week.

So there are so many different tools, Trello, To-Doist, Asana, which a lot of people use, etc., etc.

But again, the point is to get it out.

Now, why do I say get it out?

Again, it’s about not seeing, it’s about focus and not seeing a bunch of stuff when you go to your inbox going, oh my God, I’ve got to check all these things out.

If your inbox is empty, just like your desk, if your desk is empty and you’re going to work with an empty desk, then you’re just not focusing on, oh, got to tidy up this desk.

You’re not focusing on, oh, I’ve got to go get rid of all these emails.

Now, obviously, they’re in your task manager and your project management tool. but you’re not looking at every single email that you’ve put into those tools.

You’re looking, if you’re working on a project, you go to the project, and you’re working in the tasks for that project.

So say, for instance, you get 20 emails in a day.

Now, three of those are for one project.

One is for another one.

Five is for another one.

But they’re obviously for specific dates.

You’ll obviously date them.

And again, I made a video about dating tasks and stuff.

So you’re still not looking at 20. things in your task manager or your project management tool you’re still looking at one or two because you’ve dated them for that date anyway that was a that was a quick video talking quickly but I think you understand the point the point is to not lose focus and if you have a bunch of stuff in your inbox you dread you generally have that weight on your shoulder so you lose focus on what you’re actually doing I’ll leave it there today Tomorrow is Wednesday.

So weekly Wednesday, if you’re not subscribed to my newsletter, weekly Wednesday newsletter, I’ll put a link down below, go and check it out.

And if you have any questions about this episode or, in fact, any other episode, there’ll be a link below to have a chat with me.

I’m always open for chats.

Anyway, as always, keep it simple, keep it calm, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Take care.

Ciao.

Bye-bye.