After a Getting Things Done micro-seminar given by a friend, I took it upon myself to start learning about, and introducing, GTD into my life. I’m not an expert but a few simple changes have made a huge difference already. One of these is how I manage and organise emails.

photo credit: Yodel Anecdotal
I now know what needs action, what I’m waiting on, where reference emails are stored and I don’t keep lots of emails unnecessarily. The system helps me manage my emails. It works with email clients and webmail (so outlook, Apple’s mail, thunderbird, gmail, yahoo mail etc. you name it) and the simple structure can be used at home as well as in the office. Organized emails!

New Folder Structure:

Here are the mail subfolders I have created under my ‘inbox’ and their descriptions. Placing an @symbol in front of the folder name causes it to appear at the top of the screen, so it puts the important folders first

@ Action – emails/items/tasks that require me to do something
@ Read or Review – emails that take me more than two minutes to read
@ Someday Maybe – things I may look at in the future, not right now. For instance training courses I’m interested in.
@ Waiting – emails where I’m waiting for a third party to reply/perform an action etc before I move this email elsewhere.
Current Year – Contains organized sub-folders with each of my current projects. These project folders contain the emails I really need to keep.
Archive (at the end of each year I move the ‘current year’ folder (and it’s subfolders) into the archive and rename it 20XX). I then create a new ‘Current Year’ folder for the new year.

The Rules

Here are the rules I follow in order to process and deal with my emails on a day to day basis:

1. As soon as an email arrives: it is moved into one of the subfolders below the inbox, read or deleted. If the email is going to take more than two minutes to look at I immediately file it into @ Read or Review. No exceptions.

2. I only keep emails I think I will really, really need in the future. These emails are moved into an appropriate project folder under Current Year. This is usually after they have been in the @ Action, @ Read or Review or @ Waiting folders for a time. If I’ve had a ten-email conversation with someone I may only keep one of these messages if I really think I will need it for reference in the future. I used to keep them all. Keeping unnecessary emails clutters up the system and makes it harder for me to find the emails I really need.

3. I delete emails more than I keep them. I used to keep everything in my inbox and sporadically move emails into a project folder or an archive folder. I had so many emails in my inbox I had no idea what I needed to action and things were sometimes lost or forgotten. I kept thousands of messages in my archives that I didn’t even need.

4. I allocate myself blocks of time each day to process the @Action and @Read or Review folders and also check or chase @waiting emails.

How I implemented this system

1. I started with a clean slate: I moved all of my existing inbox emails, folders and subfolders into a folder called ‘old-system’.
2. I created the new folder structure.
3. I started processing new emails using the system immediately.
4. I sorted through my ‘old-system’ folder gradually. I allocated a block of time each day to sort through these old emails. I went through all of the old messages and folders, deciding what I really needed to keep and either moving the messages into the new system or deleting them altogether. It took some time, but I knew I was keeping on top of all my new emails.

Simple as that! This system works well for me. If you can recommend any improvements, please comment below! For non GTD’ers I would recommend you read Getting Things Done, by David Allen.

It amazes me how bad some online shops still are. I’m sorry to start out on a negative note, but there are still a large number of resellers out there that don’t see the link between how their website looks and feels, and how many products they sell. Whats the the point in getting 5000 hits if 4998 of them are wasted because users don’t trust you? When I visit a web shop I immediately form an impression of the company based on their website. It helps me decide whether I think it’s safe to order a product from them or not. When I visit a site that looks like it’s been whipped up in FrontPage I lose confidence and immediately move on (this is measured as your site’s ‘bounce’ rate). Maybe it’s unfair but it’s a bit like eating out, if the restaurant looks rough and ready from the outside, I’m going to try the Italian down the road.

To highlight my point I’ve decided to go a bit old skool; I’ve been looking for a ‘real’ chess set (that doesn’t beep or flash) for the coffee table so I thought I’d try and buy one online.

As luck would have it chess resellers are a brilliant example (I’m sorry chaps). You know when you are trying to find something and all you keep getting are sites that look like they’ve been put together by an Eastern European gang just to steal your credit card details? Welcome to the world of online chess shops. That was until I [finally] found a chess shop that seems to have bothered with good web design; Regency Chess based in Bath. A shining example to behold perhaps?…..well yes, pretty much actually. They look like they’ve put a lot of effort into their site, they were quick when it came to delivery and they were really friendly when I spoke to them on the phone. When I’m impulse buying, I want (no need!) whatever it is I’ve ordered…yesterday.

I ordered a chess set from them at 11am on Thursday and….. alleluia…. it arrived at 10:15 the next morning. I’m no chess geek but the set they sent me looks really nice. It’s a 14” folding chess set with weighted pieces, the board is made from a chunky hardwood (I think it is Sheesham Wood) and it actually feels like it’s worth the £90 I paid for it. Yes, I could have bought something cheaper but some chess sets can cost hundreds, even thousands, and this feels like a good balance. It could easily pass for something twice as expensive. I got emails to tell me my order had shipped, communication was great and everything was properly packed.

I don’t often recommend or plug websites, not that many impress me, but I have to say I had such a good experience I felt compelled to use them as an example of a how specialist web stores should be. Take a look at their site, and then perform a search on google and look at some of their competitors sites. You’ll see what I mean. They’ve obviously spent a lot of time developing their site, making it easy to use without spending an absolute fortune.

Anyway that’s my geekout for today, Staunton Chess sets equal Regency Chess. Search Engine Optimisation PLUS good design equals better sales.

In a bizarre turn of events Virgin Media has joined forces with the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) to harass customers that the BPI claims have illegally downloaded music tracks using Virgin’s Broadband service.

Up to 800 warning letters have been sent out to customers by Virgin with the warning “if you don’t read this your broadband could be disconnected”. The letter is part of a wider ‘three strikes and your out’ campaign by the BPI and has left some Virgin customers scratching their heads wondering whether they are paying Virgin Media for an internet service or a ‘re-education’ programme.

The move has been widely criticised, with some talking about ‘a PR disaster’ and ‘biting the hand that feeds it’. Whilst other ISP’s, including the Carphone Warehouse, have sent the BPI away with a flea in it’s ear, Virgin appears to have readily ‘offered-up’ it’s customers, sparking more privacy fears and concerns over loyalty.

This latest debacle comes as yet another blow to Virgin Media’s reputation following the Phorm fiasco, in which it was revealed that Virgin planned to sell its customers browsing history to the advertising company Phorm, Inc.

Whatever Virgin Media’s intentions, this appears to be advertising gold for the UK’s other ISP’s.