Getting Things Done - Part 1: The email purge

I know, no clever title this time. Well, this is a reasonably serious post and I'm hoping to make this a continuing series.

I'm several days into an implementation of David Allen's Getting Things Done(GTD). Various things in my professional and personal life have come together to illustrate that:

• I have more commitments than my brain can keep in its "RAM".


• I don't have control over all (or frankly any) of the input vectors that bring me information.


• The stress from this lack of control piles up quickly and limits my ability to adapt to the more tactical issues in both sides of life.


• Having 2948 messages (340 unread) in my Inbox is just wrong.

When someone does something to significantly change their life there is often a triggering event. "I'm quitting smoking because they found a spot on my lung." Or, "My girlfriend dumped me so I'll get in shape." For me there wasn't any one event that kicked this off. Mostly I was just getting fed up with the number of things that I couldn't control in my professional life that were making demands on me and my time. While reading up on the techniques I wanted to use I came to the conclusion that I could derive a lot of benefit from this in my personal life, too.

So, what have I done so far? With the help of many tips from lifehack.org, 43 Folders (specifically the Inbox Zero series) and Hawk Wings I have successfully processed my professional and personal Inboxes to zero messages. lifehack.org and 43 Folders are fairly general sites about productivity and GTD while Hawk Wings in a Mac and Mail.app focused site.

While I attempted to migrate from Thunderbird to Mail.app I have found Mail's IMAP support to be seriously lacking. Therefore my GTD toolkit is as follows:

• Thunderbird - Email
  
• Mac Address Book Plugin - integrates Mac OSX Address Book


• Quickfile - enables keyboard-based folder navigation and message filing


• iCal - Calendar


• Groupcal - iCal to MS Exchange synchronization (not a great app but unfortunately it's the only game in town)


• Kinkless - GTD lists and actions. Just a set of AppleScript hooks to create basic GTD structures in Omni Outliner Pro


• Quicksilver - just the best Mac productivity app ever. If you're a keyboard junkie like I am you have to check this out.
  

I haven't migrated everything into Kinkless just yet. But I have implemented the email triaging techniques recommended in the Inbox Zero series and have become friends with deleting and archiving. Just look at my email client (left).