The Intelligent Way to Process Email

Fresh from a wonderful 12-day trip, I am bracing myself for a deluge of email. But before I click get mail, I wanted to come up with a more intelligent way to respond to 500 emails.

To prepare myself for what David Allen calmly calls inputs, I open my laptop and start typing. The GTD guy calls what I'm doing a mindsweep. I disagree with the terminology. The way my mind jumps around, it's less like sweeping and more like lassoing a bucking Mustang. It's a mishmash of plans for a dozen projects, schedules, worries, insights and brainstorming.

In the process of unloading everything on my mind, I uncover the core of what is bothering me. Thanks to this aha! experience; my intellect kicks in. If 500 emails or anything else assail you on a given work day, I recommend approaching the task with an empty mind.

EMPTY YOUR MIND BEFORE APPROACHING MUSTANG

Avoid using pen and paper. Achieving an empty mind is easier in the digital world. Going through handwritten notes line by line takes a long time. Handwritten pages add to an already stacked in-basket. Part of you recognizes that nothing short of a Herculean effort would make a dent in that to-do list.

Use your laptop and an integrated mail and calendar program. Find an application in which you can not only type but transfer select text to to your calendar automatically. You want a list of important items that are easy and quick to process. Notes in Apple Mail lets me type on a familiar yellow pad. As I select the important ideas and actions, the program transfers them to iCal's sidebar.

Set a timer for ten minutes. Setting a timer is the best way to get going. My mind jumps around like a rebellious child in the morning.

Keep typing; don't stop. While the timer is running, your goal is to keep typing until your mind feels empty. Don't stop to figure out how you are going to do it. If you find yourself staring at the screen, your mind is probably wrestling with details. Trust the process. Get your fingers moving again. Make that keyboard hum. If you stay on this single task, you will see how swiftly you can achieve an empty state.

When your mind feels empty, stop. When your mind stops yakking, enjoy the silence. If the stuff on your list is not just actions or today's to-dos but all over the board, you probably feel good. Seeds need soil and sunlight to open and reveal their potential. Your mind needs breathing room. Curiously, I achieve emptiness without typing half of the thoughts that kept me tossing until midnight the night before.

ZERO IN ON THE MOST SIGNIFICANT MOVES

Without any more typing, select the important kernels. You'll notice that some things come easily: today's appointments, project ideas, a handful of two-minute actions, this week's deadlines, errands.

Other items are components of complex projects; or reflections and insights of a deeper nature. Freewriting with a timer helps you cut to the chase. As you identify actions and ideas, you'll be surprised by the amount of hemming and hawing it takes for a core desire to emerge, startlingly succinct.

Best of all, the transfer is effortless. With handwritten pages, it took me an hour or more to read each line and type the gems in project files and on my calendar. With Apple Mail, it takes ten minutes to select and transfer what's important. I select the important items and right-click to bring the menu with the "New To Do" command. Because Apple Mail works seamlessly with iCal, each item appears on my iCal To Do Items sidebar.

Looking at this best-of-the-best list should give you a sense of potential and ease. I open the calendar to a elegant list in the sidebar rather than a cluttered desktop with dozens of open files.

INSIDE THE CORRAL: LOOK AT WHAT YOU'VE HARNESSED

First, scan the list for immediate concerns. What time is that dentist's appointment? Is this evening's meeting still on the schedule? Are there any two-minute actions you can knock off the list? If you can dispatch an email or leave a voice message in two minutes, you've gained momentum and deleted two items.

Review the list for calendar items. Drag items to the calendar to further shrink the list. Digital calendars are far superior to paper versions in this regard. The best applications allow you to drag-and-drop items to any day or time. Working in iCal, I move appointments, meetings, phone interviews to time slots and everything else to the all-day section at the top. When the optimum moment arrives to complete the item, I pop it into next to the current time.

Dragging an item automatically opens it, revealing places to attach a file, email or URL. Event items also contain useful fields. Add any meaningful nomenclature that you've adopted for your system. I add project titles and-because I categorized my active project folders by areas of interest and responsibility-I add those in a field.

Assign a context. Actions are easy to complete when you have the right tools and conditions, or what David Allen calls contexts. This key GTD concept groups items by the tools you need and the places you need to be; such as home, car, computer, smartphone, office, internet.

Review the list for support material related to active projects. Pick a day to work on each active project and drag items to the calendar. The notes field can hold reams of support material until you are ready to work on the project. Be sure to add the active project title in the subject field. It's best if active project files open with a single click. If you are on a Mac, drag active projects to the Finder sidebar so they open quickly. This clears out the To Do Items sidebar.

Now I'm ready to take on 500 emails with a keen awareness of what's important to me. I process my email with a calm intellect just as I did my timed writing, responding to ten emails in twenty minutes. I end up with five important to-dos on my Calendar. (Apple Mail automatically adds calendar items if the email has a date you can select.)

Written By Donna Ann Peck
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