Wise Startup Blog

So I hope you guys have already read my first post about Getting Things Done, and are already working your mailbox like a champ.

To recap, to get started, you should create 3 mailboxes:

• Action – for items that need to be completed soon
• Hold – for mails you may need in the coming week
• Archive – anything that you might search for in the future

So as opposed to giving you tips, I’ll give you a couple examples of what you should put in each folder to help you formulate your own strategy.

Action

You have to make a call tomorrow, and you need the phone number from the email for the call.

You need to ship a package tomorrow for work or eBay

You have a group of newsletters that you have set rules to auto-organize into your action folder.

If you have setup todo emails, all of your todo items should land in this action folder.

Action is basically for anything that needs to be completed in the next 24 hours, and you should empty your action folder at the end of the day.
Hold

You have a call at the end of the week, and are going to need to reference the email during the call.

You are waiting for more information to return an email OR you are waiting for a response from an email you sent out, and you may have to handle yourself.

There is a link in an email that you are going to want later in the week, and possibly followup to that email at that time.

The hold folder is basically for anything that has a 1 week urgency. You should clean this out every 1-2 weeks, and archive any information after its been in the hold folder.
Archive

You have google alerts setup for your business, and after clicking on the link, you may want to search for the email again, so you archive it.

You receive shipment notification for a package from Amazon.

You receive a detailed email from a customer that you may want to reference later.

You are done with any content from your Action or Hold folders. It is important that you don’t junk any content from these two core folders, as it most likely should be archived.

I’m going to follow this post up with more tips for email as far as rules, keyboard shortcuts, etc.

Hope you enjoy !