Back on the productivity tips train this week with the productivity equivalent of the “make your bed” speech given by Navy Seal William McRaven. If you’ve never seen it, give that link a little tickle, and watch it.
He also has a book which is also funnily enough called “make your bed”. I’m led to believe it’s also good. I just listened to 5 mins of the audiobook and it’s not for me. But you might enjoy it.
Anyway, in my analogy, your email inbox is your bed.
To unlock a productivity zen like no other, I encourage you to CYFI. Clear Your Forking Inbox.
[Tangent. If you’ve not seen The Good Place on Netflix, I encourage you to watch it for a fresh perspective on swearing if nothing else!]
I started clearing my inbox as a productivity priority a few years ago. I don’t achieve zero very often but I do usually only have a mere handful of emails sitting in my inbox.
I don’t use any fancy software for emails, just the Mac Mail and iPhone Mail apps.
I don’t have any sophisticated system of flagging emails to be replied to later.
I don’t use delayed responses or any other automations.
CYFI relies on one thing and one thing only. Sitting there and replying, moving or deleting. First job every day. I’m making my e-Bed.
For me, a clear inbox is a clear head. And a clear head is EVERYTHING when it comes to productivity either in your business/admin/work or in feeling like you have the time to go out and be creative/have fun.
(KISS stands for Keep It Simple Stupid but I prefer to think of it as Keep It Stupidly Simple.)
Yes you can do clever things by using rules to delete stuff as it comes in or move it to a folder, or add a flag etc, but I like to just sit there and work through them 2-3 times a day, and in between I close my Mail app so I’m not getting notifications because of my strong belief in monotasking…
I did a podcast episode recently about Monotasking if you want to listen!
Hey. You. CYFI.
Thanks for reading!
Adam
