GTDInbox for Gmail - Easy email management, organization and workflow based on GTD

Introduction to our Workflow

So you want more organized, more manageable and more effective email?

It's going to require you to pause and reconsider how you think about email.

Popular opinion - possibly one that you can relate to from your experiences - is that email ruins productivity. That it is doomed because it cannot cope with modern workloads, and will be replaced by something better.

It is true that email is a highly reactive and chaotic medium. We are always fighting the fires of newly arrived emails, and losing information to the bowels of our email client. It is also true that the volume can be overwhelming. Yet we love the simplicity of email. For years it has reliably enabled us to coordinate our activity, manage our professional relationships and collaborate in getting work done. Given the choice of sticking with email or learning a more complicated alternative, we want to stick with email.

So we need a new solution that works with our existing email clients. And it turns out that a solution simply depends upon a fresh perspective: that emails are just badly formatted tasks. (This is intuitively understood when you consider that every email, from an office joke to a request to start a new project, requires one or more units of work to process it).

What is interesting is the creative new solutions that you unlock for your own email when you force yourself to start thinking about your email client not as dumb intray, but as a task manager full of tasks to be completed. Once you have experienced everything organized into actions, projects, contexts and contacts you will never feel the same about stale old email again.

Below we're going to present just the basic outline of a task-based workflow for processing email. Over the coming weeks we will share many more ideas for better email, and we hope you share yours in the forum or on the blog.

GTDInbox's Workflow In a Nutshell

Categorize (Action) -> Review -> Do

Quite simply, you transform emails into tasks by giving them a Status; group them by Project, Context or contact; and archive them to keep your inbox empty. Then efficiently process them according to your own priorities and goals at time that suits you.

Now let's have that in a bit more detail...

Categorize

In traditional email, whether or not to answer emails immediately is more complex than you might expect. On the one hand, it is time-consuming and disruptive to reply straight away. But then it's risky to ignore things in your inbox, as your inbox is full of 'unknowns' that may contain something urgent.

Categorization gives us a powerful way out. It enables us to quickly skim the inbox, prioritize anything critical, and defer the rest with confidence.

It also makes emails easier to retrieve, which is a huge benefit to anyone facing the 'continuous demands' of a typical working day. No matter what project is thrust at you, or who asks you for information, you can zoom straight in on the related emails. It even helps you write less emails, as the longer you wait it becomes more likely that new information will come forward that will help you resolve the original email with a single reply. The ability to exercise patience is very valuable.

Once you achieve inbox zero - the state where everything is categorized and archived - all that remains is to periodically scan the newly arrived inbox items and bring your email back under control:

• S/Action
  For emails that you must take imminent action on (in the next few days).
• S/Waiting On
  For emails where you are waiting for somebody else to do something. E.g. something you have delegated, or a delivery notice. You can routinely check up on progress.
• S/Some Day
  For emails that you might like to take action on, but have no imminent priority. Keep it in the periphery of your attention.
• Just Do It
  If you can write a meaningful reply in under 2 minutes, do so. There's no point clogging up your To Do list unnecessarily.
• Or, if it's just an FYI, a thank you, a round robin joke, or spam just discard it. A response will only encourage more emails.
• (You can also create your own Status labels!)

In all cases you then Archive the email. Don't worry, GTDInbox will ensure you don't forget it.

For added effectiveness, you can group actioned emails and general resources by Project, Context or contact.

• Projects
  (Labels prefixed with P/. Can create sub-projects too. Example: P/GTDInbox/Ideas)
  Group by project if processing the actioned email will advance the project toward some goal. Or, if the email contains a resource (e.g. a file) that can be more quickly retrieved when associated with a project.
  
  Tip: Be descriptive with project names, so they sound like tasks/goals. E.g. P/MoveToNewOffice. This also works for ongoing goals, e.g. P/GTDInbox/IdeasToMaybeMoveToUserVoice). It requires far less thinking time to decide whether to categorize it that way (as you know exactly what it's intended for).
• Contexts
  (Labels prefixed with C/)
  Traditionally, contexts are a place/situation where it is optimal to process that kind of actioned email. E.g C/Office, C/Home, C/Phone. However, for email it makes sense to base contexts around groups of people (who you might consider important, or want to check up on routinely). E.g. C/CoWorkers/ProjectX, C/Biz/Investors, C/Biz/Journalists.
  
  Tip: If you use contexts for groups of people, set up Gmail Filters so they auto categorized.
• Contacts
  This happens automatically! Just right click any contact.

(Nb if you're worried that it might be a burden to do all this categorization, you'll be pleasantly surprised by how quick GTDInbox makes it - it's a process very intune with how you would normally handle emails).

Review

The magic happens when you can efficiently batch process emails at the opportune time.

Select which batch to process based on your current priorities and goals (e.g. an active project, things for your colleague, details ahead of a meeting) and power through them.

You can easily kick start this process using the 'Reviews' box in the GTDInbox Sidebar, or by right-clicking a label/contact anywhere in Gmail - which will bring up GTDInbox's powerful Popup Browser.

Do?

Coming soon... we are busy writing the full ProactiveEmail workflow, which is bursting with useful insights built up over our 3 years experimenting with email features and workflows. (Follow on GTDInbox on Twitter to be notified when it's ready).