Well, I’ve just spent the better part of two hours cleaning and sorting out my inbox, and I’ve finally dodged email bankruptcy once again.
Whew.
“Email bankcruptcy” is that term that was coined by Laurence Lessig, where you basically throw your hands in the air, and delete your entire inbox — then send out a mass email apologizing profusely for not answering everyone because … well, you’ve declared bankruptcy in your inbox. And then ask for a resend.
I did have an epiphany of sorts while I was doing it.
Not the kind where I had a hallelujah chorus or anything like that, but a quiet one while I was tagging, deleting, archiving, and *cursing* how gmail won’t allow you to sort by sender.
Yep, I realized that email bankruptcy — for me, anyway — is all about procrastination.
The desire to want to put things off.
The inexplicable urge to NOT want to make a decision about something.
Combine it with being a pack rat about … well, pretty much everything in life, and its a situation that’s rife for organizational disaster. And I think whether its a giant stack of papers on my desk, or a giant stack of virtual papers in my virtual inbox, its pretty much all the same.
I’ve read David Allen’s Getting Things Done a few times. If organizational issues are a pain for you, there are tons of great resources, and you should think about reading it yourself.
But one of the biggest things I got out of it was, no matter how you actually organize things, how important it is to *have* a system and how you have to be ruthless about being regular when you commit to it.
There’s no great science to it, but for me, I basically try and decide that when Stuff Comes In, I sort it, do something about it, or throw it out. And if you have no plans on doing something about it? Throw it out.
And for me, the biggest stumbling block is that “do something about it” metaphorical folder. Because its the NOT doing stuff — and not making decisions — that is natural as a life-long procrastinator.
I don’t have any great revelations over exactly what I will be doing in the future to stave off email bankruptcy, save trying to implement some small, but consistent, changes in my behaviour. And trying to reaffirm the idea about making small decisions with email, as in life, is the right thing to do. And that the familiar kind of “its not a big deal — I’ll deal with it later” type thinking is a kind of false thinking, and an invalid cognition, that needs to be stopped dead in its tracks.
Meh … big words, but we’ll see how it goes in a week’s time. ;)
July 7th, 2007 at 4:13 pm | Permalink
Getting in to GTD is the hardest challenge of all. It’s almost an unsurpassable mountain to start with GTD.
July 7th, 2007 at 8:15 pm | Permalink
Franky,
Starting it hasn’t been a problem — sticking to it has :)
July 7th, 2007 at 8:24 pm | Permalink
Hmm.. email bankruptcy never happened to me before all thanks to my OC useless and junk mail never stays for long inside my inbox. ;)
July 8th, 2007 at 1:34 pm | Permalink
I just wrote about declaring RSS bankruptcy of sorts, which sort of tracks with trying to find sanity and some sort of control over the massive influx of information many of us have to deal with today.
Gmail’s folders have been a huge help for me. It allows me to pack rat e-mail that *might* be useful at some point for relatively easy retrieval later. I use my Inbox as the place for stuff I need to do something with. It sits there and stares at me and stares at me until I’m snapped out of my ever present provcrastinative state!
It’s a drag and depressing though when I simply can’t hack down the Inbox to a reasonable state. The thought of e-mail bankruptcy will certainly be tempting!
July 8th, 2007 at 8:58 pm | Permalink
Funny you mention that, Eric.
I find with RSS feeds that I tend to just scan the lof of them by headline. For news sites it does tend to work, although for certain bloggers I do need to have a look at the excerpt to get a flavour of the post.
Cheers
t @ dji
July 9th, 2007 at 12:21 pm | Permalink
If by “coined” you mean, “wrote or said for the first time,” then Lessig didn’t coin “email bankruptcy.” See here.
July 12th, 2007 at 4:13 am | Permalink
Email bankruptcy is awful for me. It means that everybody forgets about you. Sad!
July 13th, 2007 at 3:35 pm | Permalink
“But one of the biggest things I got out of it was, no matter how you actually organize things, how important it is to *have* a system and how you have to be ruthless about being regular when you commit to it.”
That is the crux of the problem. The fun part for me is the organizing. I started the SHE system years ago, and I go back to it occasionally. Arranging the chore cards in their file box makes me feel as though I am accomplishing something. Actually DOING those chores as they pop up on the calendar only lasts for about a month.
July 18th, 2007 at 6:30 pm | Permalink
[...] week, bordering on the brink of email bankruptcy, I would have done terrible things all for being able to sort by author. Doesn’t anyone else [...]