Reducing Inboxes in 2005: Part III - Physical Inboxes

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Originally published October 2005

Overview

During my examination of how information comes into my life, I found that there was a much larger amount of potential “in-boxes” than I had thought. My task was to list all of these input spaces and see if the number could be reduced, and then make sure that each of them get processed.

In this post I will tackle my physical in-boxes.

At the start of this exercise I had the following physical in-boxes: 1 at my secondary client, one by the door at home, one on my home desk, and a traveling one I kept in my “office in a bag.”

Client

The client in-box gets processed when I am there. I can’t really do away with it, but I don’t have to check it if I’m not there, which is seldom.

Home

The in-box by my door is a problem. It ends up being a dumping ground for everything. Unfortunately, it is the only place that the mail ends up when it is brought into the house. I have incorporated into my walking-in-at-the-end-of-the-day routine to pick up anything there and bring it with my briefcase upstairs, where both get deposited into my home office in box.

Traveling In box

My traveling in box was used to cart information back and forth to work. Since my client files remain at the client, these were usually interesting articles printed from the web. I resolved to do away with these.

New Tool To Eliminate In box: EWizmo

Enter one of two practical tools that will figure greatly in the following emails: EWizmo.

EWizmo is an online “reminder” service that allows you to send emails to yourself. It has a set list of categories and simply sends emails. Since it is browser based, it is very easy to clip a URL and send it to myself, where it ends up in my email box for processing. This has eliminated the need for me to carry around my office in a bag, and for the first time in years, I go to work carrying only my lunch!