And too, the return

Thanks to Inbox Zero!
Another one of those Dan’s New Leaf Posts, meant to inspire thought about IT Governance . . . .

Well, it’s my first morning back from the Staycation.  Lots of yard work and barn maintenance.  White Sox games and bonfires and GuitarZan Day with Al & Dudley and sleep … yes, sleep!  Plenty of sleep.

And here it is – Monday!

You know how it is.  I feel like I’m waking up from a dream.   And this was a two week vacation.   But I’m also a bit fired up.   It was a productive time off.

But I take time out of “the return” to document some metrics and write this Dan’s New Leaf post.  See, I just completed my inbox review.  I’m actually proud of how long it took.

Twenty minutes even!

Prior to being at Inbox Zero, I would dread the day before my return, because it would typically take at least two – as much as three hours on the Sunday before my return, simply to get through all of my email.

482 messages in total.   I’m not really sure what this number was prior to Inbox Zero, but I’m betting it was more than 1,000.  The rules I’ve written have substantially decreased the incoming mail I need to process.

251 of those messages were in my “other” folder. Meaning they were newsletters or spam that needed to be marked or whatever.    I looked carefully, but quickly, at the sender column and quickly deleted all of these messages.

Of the 231 remaining messages I archived/moved-to-address 85, and deleted the rest.  That means that 63% of my inbox is still noise, not including the stuff that would go to the “other” folder.   I can improve that by writing more rules, moving more senders permanently to “other,” and marking more senders as junk.

It’s amazing that I am proud of 63%.  I wonder what it would be without Inbox Zero.

There are now 33 messages I will need to address between now and the end of the week, and three messages that I must address today.

Now I’m really fired up!

Original article by Dan Hadaway CRISC CISA CISM. Founder and Information Architect, infotex

”Dan’s New Leaf” – a fun blog to inspire thought in  IT Governance.