radiant.matrix

From Neatorama:

Have a Simple Filing System Don’t overthink this: a complex folder with subfolder system is not what you need to remain organized. Obviously, your particular needs will dictate how many folders you have … but in my experience, you rarely, if ever, need subfolders. — Rule the Web (and Rule Your Email Inbox!)

I’ve seen way too many people trying to implement some kind of sensible filing system for their e-mail only to let complexity lead them to utter failure. Complexity and sensibility seem to be conflated on a regular basis. Having just gone through the early stages of implementing the GTD system, I know from personal experience how seductive complexity can be.

The important breakthrough for me came when I realized a few key points:

1. E-mail is either actionable or reference — that is, there’s either something you need to do about it, or you just need to be able to find it later. Any message that doesn’t fit those categories is junk, and needs to be deleted.
2. As a result of #1, you really need two simple filing systems: one for actionable items and one for reference.
3. More folder makes things harder to find, not easier (search is your friend).

At work, where I get the largest volume of e-mail by far, I’ve implemented the following system:

Actionable items For actionable items, there are only three folders: ‘-Action’, ‘-Read/Review’, and ‘-Waiting For’. The leading ‘-’ lets them sort to the top in Lotus Notes. The rules for putting an e-mail in one of these folders are very simple:

• Messages I need to do something with — reply to, add to my actions lists, whatever — represent actions I have to take. They go into -Action
• Long missives that I have to read, links to documents to review, etc. go to my -Read/Review folder. If, after I read them, I realize that I need to do something (like reply), items get moved into -Action
• Messages (including sent messages) that represent something I’m waiting for someone else to do go into -Waiting For. Any time I ask someone to do something, or they promise something, the message goes into -Waiting For. I review this folder regularly, poking people who need to be reminded of something, and archiving (into references) things I’m not waiting for anymore.

That’s it. These folders get regularly reviewed — when items no longer belong in a given folder, I re-file as needed (usually into the references folders)

Reference items When I need to keep an e-mail for reference, it’s very much like filing a physical document in my Reference cabinet — the goal is to reduce the number of places it isn’t. To this end, I’ve created the following folders:

• One general Reference folder
• One folder for each major active project, labelled as Reference - [Project Name] (e.g. Reference - XML Data Conversion for the XML Data Conversion project)

That’s it. I follow the following rules:

• If I don’t need it, I delete it. Unfortunately, I need to keep most of my e-mail.
• Messages that don’t relate to one of my current major projects go into the general “Reference” folder
• Messages relating to a given project go in that project’s reference folder.
• When a project is no longer active, I move all of the messages into the Reference folder
• I don’t create sub-folders. Ever.

That’s it: the folders help me narrow my searches effectively, but search remains my primary work mode. As a result, I never spend more than a few minutes finding an e-mail that I need to reference, much to the amazement of my colleagues.