Advice for setting up a pre-existing Gmail account for GTD

dashik

Registered
One of the things I wrote down on my brain dump list was to process the rest of my emails. The thing is, I have many, many email accounts. However, I only have one "main" email account, where any and all emails received from any of my accounts (university email, work email, family/friends email) gets funneled into the main one. I rarely check the others.

Now I want to process all of those emails to get down to Inbox Zero. However, I already have a tagging and filter system in place which I'm comfortable with that I set up years ago, but it organizes email by category, and not by GTD contexts. I also tend to be a huge "pack rat", as in I save pretty much every email I get and rarely delete emails.

I know it's going to be a long run (I probably have over 3000 emails to go through at the very least), so I'd like to ask for some advice for setting up my email account for GTD.
  1. First of all, just to clarify, do I also need to process all of my other email accounts, or just my "main one"? I'm thinking I can leave the others alone, since I'll primarily only be using my main one... right?
  2. Do you have a certain context/tag structure for GTD? For example, do you create Labels like @WaitingFor, @SomedayMaybe, and apply the labels to emails as you get them? What about nextaction? I plan on using a task list program separate from Gmail, so I'm not sure if, when I receive an email that's actionable, I should move it to a nextaction label, or just make a note of it in my Next Actions list... What do you guys do here?
  3. I'm thinking about keeping my existing tagging/filter system, but just calling it my "Reference" space for emails. Is this a good idea, or should I just start everything from scratch and organize it by project/alphabetical instead? (See example below.)
  4. Kind of an unrelated question, but is it typical to have your GTD "in box" split across multiple mediums and devices? For example, I have a paper tray for processing physical items I receive (mail, magazines, etc...), my Gmail for emails, my phone for recording visual/voice notes of ideas, and a notebook for when I have an idea but it would be inappropriate to use my phone (e.g. meetings). My only concern is remembering to process stuff out of all my inboxes (inboxen?). Is this something you guys do in a daily/weekly review, or whenever you have time?

As an example of the current way I categorize my emails, I have labels such as...
- Education (for stuff when I was in high school)
---- SAT (emails from CollegeBoard, daily SAT tips/practice questions)
---- ACT
- Family
- Languages (I like learning languages, and subscribed to several "Word of the Day" sites which email me a word a day in different languages)
---- French
---- Spanish
---- Chinese
- Mail (mail from other accounts)
---- Other Gmail accounts
---- Yahoo!
---- Hotmail
- Sites (miscellaneous stuff like notifications, updates from certain websites)
---- Facebook
---- Twitter
---- LinkedIn

If I were to turn this into a more GTD-like reference system (for email only; I use Evernote for any other digital reference stuff), what would be a better way to organize these (if any)?

Thanks!
 

PeterW

Registered
Hi,

People handle email in a variety of ways. For me, I try very hard to not use my email client as a todo list, i.e. by leaving items in the inbox as reminders or by filing them in folders such as 'waiting-for'. I simply respond to emails in my inbox if that's what is needed or file the messages that are informational and don't need a response. I do my email filing by subject matter (folders with subfolders) so I know where to find it later.

If an email is actionable and I can't do it right away, I push the contents into Omnifocus. I do this either by forwarding the entire email via Omni's sync server, or by using a right-click send-to-Omnifocus option that my email client has (which embeds a link back to the original email).

I have multiple personal accounts also and have them setup to auto-forward to one main account. I only login to the other accounts to check the spam folder in case something went there by mistake. I have a few work email accounts to manage but file everything in one main account.

I do have other inboxes, e.g. physical in-tray on my desk, and the Drafts app on my phone has an inbox that I manage but it's only ever a few items.
 

Oogiem

Registered
I have all my e-mail accounts (3 gmail ones, several for various organizations I am an officer in and several personal ones as well as ones for the business) all dump into my single e-mail inbox. Once an e-mail is processed it goes into either reference (where I keep everything), or into the separate folders (tags in gmail?) that correspond to the organizations I do work for. E-mail inbox is only temporary for me. I used to separate things out a lot but I found it was unnecessary and I did just as well going back to find stuff by dumping it all into a single big reference folder. I do pull e-mails out into other filing places (DEVONThink specifically or Omnifocus) when I need the e-mail as project support material but I always do that with a copy, the originals stay in the e-mail system.

I have an e-mail inbox, an inbox in Omnifocus for projects and actiosn that need processing and a paper inbox. I also consider some social media (twitter and ravelry) to be inboxes on occasion. As David Allen says, have as many inboxes as you need and as few as you can get away with.
 

devon.marie

Registered
dashik said:

  1. First of all, just to clarify, do I also need to process all of my other email accounts, or just my "main one"? I'm thinking I can leave the others alone, since I'll primarily only be using my main one... right?


  1. I'd just do your main one - if that's the only place you go to manage your email, that's all you need!

    dashik said:
    Do you have a certain context/tag structure for GTD? For example, do you create Labels like @WaitingFor, @SomedayMaybe, and apply the labels to emails as you get them? What about nextaction? I plan on using a task list program separate from Gmail, so I'm not sure if, when I receive an email that's actionable, I should move it to a nextaction label, or just make a note of it in my Next Actions list... What do you guys do here?

    I store every ounce of reference material in Evernote. Emails get clipped from Gmail (Evernote has a wonderful Gmail web clipper feature), files attached to notes, the whole 9 yards. I want every SINGLE item I possibly can inside Evernote so I can reference everything from one place. For task management I use Todoist because it also integrates very well with Gmail (it has its own Gmail app that lets you easily attach messages to tasks).

    So what I do when I receive an email that's actionable is I filter it through the GTD flowchart. Is it actionable? If so, is one step necessary to complete it (task), or will it require multiple steps to complete (project)? If it's a simple one-step (or even two step) task, I add it as a task to Todoist through the Todoist app. If it's the start of a project (or related to a project), I add to Todoist using the same method as above but also clip it to Evernote and tag it with the project's tag. I have a tag for every project, and since you can hierarchically stack tags in Evernote, I have them divvied up under Completed Projects, Active Projects, and Someday Projects. Then I Archive the email so it's out of my inbox (Todoist and Evernote can both pull it up later from the Archive).

    dashik said:
    I'm thinking about keeping my existing tagging/filter system, but just calling it my "Reference" space for emails. Is this a good idea, or should I just start everything from scratch and organize it by project/alphabetical instead? (See example below.)

    I personally think this is a good idea. Gmail labels are the same as Evernote tags in that you can apply multiple to emails/notes. I prefer to sort my reference material by key words and descriptive titles, since to me it's easier to find stuff that way - it's much more organic. If it could only go in one location, I'd possibly reconsider, but fortunately it doesn't have that limitation :) So if you want, you can keep organizing your stuff that way while implementing another layer - such as labels for projects or Areas. YMMV but with over 7,000 notes in Evernote, this structure has been working well for me, at least!

    dashik said:
    Kind of an unrelated question, but is it typical to have your GTD "in box" split across multiple mediums and devices? For example, I have a paper tray for processing physical items I receive (mail, magazines, etc...), my Gmail for emails, my phone for recording visual/voice notes of ideas, and a notebook for when I have an idea but it would be inappropriate to use my phone (e.g. meetings). My only concern is remembering to process stuff out of all my inboxes (inboxen?). Is this something you guys do in a daily/weekly review, or whenever you have time?

    I think this is perfectly normal (if not the most ideal). I have a paper inbox, email inbox, Evernote inbox, and notebook I use all on an almost daily basis. It's just key that you review these items on a regular schedule, whatever works best for you. Weekly suffices for me, so every Monday I come into the office and immediately process every Inbox to empty. I found notebooks to be the most difficult to manage, but finding the Bullet Journal system relieved that stress for me. It makes it very simple to check that you've processed everything you've written. All other inboxes are processed when they're empty, which is another easy sign. Just make sure you block off time to do this regularly.

    dashik said:
    If I were to turn this into a more GTD-like reference system (for email only; I use Evernote for any other digital reference stuff), what would be a better way to organize these (if any)?

    Whatever works for you is the best plan! If you're used to this system and it covers all of your bases, I wouldn't change it. If you find that you continually struggle with a certain aspect (like related project files), try some new stuff out and see what sticks. I'm also a huge advocate of getting everything into ONE reference collection, so I'll always suggest clipping it all to Evernote, but it's totally up to you as it is YOUR system. Don't be afraid to try something new if it falls through, though! You'll hit the sweet spot eventually :)
 
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