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. ;)

So I have no idea how it fits into the GTD flow of things, but surely there must be some way to integrate overall “efficiency” into your every day process of things … whether at home or at work.

God knows when I get home I have a variety of things … but at the end of the evening, where has all my (expletive) time gone?

Slimtimer.com is meant to be used to keep track of time so consultants, team managers and members etc can keep track of their hours.

Quite frankly, its also a cool way of monitoring exactly what you’re doing, so you’re able to monitor your own efficiency.

Sort of an auto-efficiency tool, if you will.

As with all things, your own diligence in keep up with the tool is directly proportional to its usefulness — wordy translation: if you use it, it becomes useful.

But, slimtimer is super easy to use, and through its Ajax-y interface (how web2.0) updates itself minute to minute and hour by hour through every single “thing” you want to track.

For example, I decided to track, certain “actions” I’m liable to do this evening.

“goof off”, “surf web”, “sort through inbox” (hello GTD!), “read internal medicine” and so on.
By clicking on an “open timer” link, a separate pop up will go up, with all of the tasks you’re interested in; of course, you’re able to add new tasks at any time by clicking “alt-a”, and “tags” as well.  But, by simply CLICKING on that task you want to keep track of, the timer will start going up.  And CLICKING it again turns it off — brilliant.

The best part of it is how its able to generate report so that you can literally see how productive or unproductive your evening was! The “Reports” section on the main web page is also able to digest your time by day, week, or month — but also, by the given activity that you’re interested in.

Want to know how many hours you wasted surfing the web last week?(if that was an interest you diligently kept track of — and its easy to do), simply run the report, and select “week” and you task!

Yes, I suppose I am a glutton for punishment.
Who really wants to know how unproductive their time really was?

On the other hand, a tool like this can easily tell you where you’re WASTING you’re time — and quantify it!
But on the flip side, it can also tell you how you’re really dividing your time, and whether you’re really allotting your time efficiently.  Did you really spend as much time reading that report as you thought?  How about working on that web development?  Versus watching television?

You might be surprised.

I was!

Two huge thumbs up to SlimTimer and all new tools like it — from a GTD perspective. 

Of course, it wouldn’t be a colonic, because it refers to the colon; total hemispheric reboot, perhaps?

Anyway, funny that 43 folders mentioned the “Mindsweep”, because I am in the process of doing it today.

I think that one of the most important things GTD does is suggest the “Total Inbox” process, whereby you collect ALL “inputs” in SOME kind of system. Although creating a system (a physical system of boxes, folders and stuff; and, a virtual system of email etc) clearly involves time, energy and money (staplers, pens, boxes, and labelers aren’t cheap!) — it is totally and utterly worth it.

Here is my “GTD” System (mentioned in a previous post … updated 2 months later)

For me, I actually bought a physical inbox where I stuff all my mail, bills, things of interest, tickle items and so on.

For my email inbox, it all gets filtered through my gmail account.

From there, my system involves sorting inbox stuff into folders (I have 3 boxes), doing actionable items (2-5 minute thingies), and setting aside “Next Action/ Do it later type stuff”.

I tend to keep a watch on stuff like “due dates” in a virtual calendar, so I can keep everything on track wherever I go.
I use 30boxes now — although recently I was using gCal (google’s calendar) — and its pretty damn cool; it keeps track of a “to do list” as well.

Most importantly, I keep track of progress on ALL fronts through netvibes.
Netvibes allows me to keep track of
1)calendar through an RSS
2)News, through RSS
3)Notes, through “web notes”
4) Project data through “notes” and “to-do” lists

I think the “trick” if there is one, is to continue to carry on with this system.
Any behavioural change is difficult to do if its not kept on with … exercise, quiting of smoking etc etc.

Eternal and damnable procrastination and disorganization is surely one of them … and something that I am struggling with / learning to deal with.

Have been eschewing nightly counterstrike +/- source with Garner for reading and implementing Getting Things Done — By David Allen.

A “ground-up” way of organizing your life, as it is meant to help you process mundane things … so you can effortlessly start managing higher level projects.

Although most things about it are intuitive, what is interesting is placing emphasis on certain things which may make a profound difference in doing things.

Such as collecting ALL of your “open-loops” into a universal “inbox”.