Managing Inboxes

Information bursts into our daily life, swelling through our mailbox into our home, the office, and more and more through the channels of modern communication.
– I come home from a talk – the head full of information
– the intermediate stop in the local office led to a backpack full of letters and notes
– the entrance of my desk swells over … was there something important in between?
– and then I stumble over the mail, which is pouring into my entrance hall
– needless to mention the bunch of emails that are steadily moving into my accounts
– oh, and then there is still the GroupWise account, for the use of which my colleagues and I have been obligated
– while I answer a short message on the way to the kitchen,
I notice a note that my wife attached to the fridge

Channeling information – remain capable of action!
I can not do my work as pastor and my duties as a family father, if I am overwhelmed by information all the time – that makes me a victim of the information age!
But I want to swim in the sea of ​​information and not to perish.
The flow of information is to be used so that it does not dominate me and makes me ineffective.

Therefore the golden rules apply:
1. So many INBOXES like NEED – no more.
2. Empty each INBOX with the regularity, according to the nature of the information it collects.
Example: With the thoughts in my head I should handle differently with short messages or emails.
3. unite all inboxes to process all informations later at once.

So first:

Just look in how many different places you keep information! (…) Identify and assign your inboxes!” #10stepsbook

1.Information types and the corresponding inboxes
– our head: thoughts – short term memory
– email accounts: digital mail – email inbox
-office + mailbox: paper – inbox in office
– Telephone + social networks: news in real time on my smartphone or Answering machine

2.regularity of emptying
Example: The thoughts in my head – immediately if possible

“You indeed have too many things on your mind and it would be best to relocate everything.” #10stepsbook

  • I write down what is driving me, make it comprehensible, vivid – so that I can then turn to what is now required by my attention.
  • Or I dictate spontaneous ideas during the car drive into my Nozbe-Inbox by voice input.
  • During my weekly review is regular time for a brain dump.
    Or how Michael Sliwinski describes:

“Start writing down everything that’s on your mind in whatever order it comes. Give yourself about 15-30 minutes. Do it now.” #10stepsbook

3.Unite Inboxes

“You need a trusted system that you can easily fill with everything you’re currently not working on” #10stepsbook

Michael Sliwinski is so true!
My trusted System ist Nozbe.
I try to gather all information from all Inboxes into my nozbe-inbox: In Nozbe, I can then later, when the right time has come to process all the information.
By integrating with many popular services such as googledrive, dropbox, onedrive and evernote, all kinds of information can be stored in the Nozbe-Inbox. There they wait for my daily processing.


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