Inbox empty, thanks David Allen

Well, part of a book, and some software later, my Inbox has zero messages (you can see the evidence at the bottom). I think that is the first time in 5 years.

Here is how it started. I had about 200 or so e-mails in my Inbox Sunday night. I used David Allen’s method for triaging my Inbox (I purchased his Outlook software) and I ended up with:

  • 15 action items (tasks)
  • 2 deferred items (calendar events)
  • 1 waiting for
  • 3 Snoozes
  • 6 Someday items

Now, having used the software I can say that it’s nothing special. It’s a bit crude, but it’s much more pleasant than doing everything manually. To be honest though, it leaves a lot to be desired. There is so much more potential in improving the workflow, making the UI more polished, adding more targeted Outlook 2003 functionality (the app seems very optimized for Outlook XP and earlier). Maybe this will be a project that I’ll take on when Outlook has a managed programmability model (I don’t know or want to know VBA and don’t care for writing code exposed as COM).