PRACTICING STRESS-FREE PRODUCTIVITY | PART TWOcall, another needs data reviewed, and still another is waiting for
someone to get back with some information—but they're all
sorted together. This arrangement can cause a person's mind to
go numb to the stack because of all the decisions that are still
pending about the next-action level of doing.
My personal system is highly portable, with almost every-
thing kept on lists, but I still maintain two categories of paper-
based reminders. I travel with a "Read/Review" plastic file folder
and another one labeled "Data Entry." In the latter I put anything
for which the next action is simply to input data into my com-
puter (business cards that need to get into my telephone/address
list, quotes for my "Quotes" database, articles about restaurants I
want to put on my "Travel—Cities" sublists, etc.).Managing E-mail-Based Workflow
Like some paper-based materials, e-mails that need action are
sometimes best as their own reminders—in this case within the
tracked e-mail system itself. This is especially likely to be true if
you get a lot of e-mail and spend a lot of your work time with your
e-mail software booted up. E-mails that you need to act on may
then be stored within the system instead of having their embed-
ded actions written out on a list.
Many of my clients have found it helpful to set up two or
three unique folders on their e-mail navigator bars. True, most
folders in e-mail should be used for reference or archived materi-
als, but it's also possible to set up a workable system that will keep
your actionable messages discretely organized, outside of the "in"
area itself (which is where most people keep them).
I recommend that you create one folder for any longer-than-
two-minute e-mails that you need to act on (again, you should be
able to dispatch many messages right off the bat by following the
two-minute rule). The folder name should begin with a prefix let-
ter or symbol so that (1) it looks different from your reference
folders and (2) it sits at the top of your folders in the navigator bar.
Use something like the "@" sign in Microsoft or the dash ("-") in