Processing: Asking yourself a series of questions about your open loop. Take a look at the flow chart above to see what questions you should be asking yourself.
What is it?
Is it actionable?
> No? > Trash, or > Someday/Maybe, or > Reference
> Yes? > What's the next action? > Projects (planning), or > Project Plans (review for action)
Will it take less then 2 minutes?
Yes? > Do it!
No? > Delegate it, or > Defer it.
A step that was introduced was Reference - kinda of like the task manager but it is used to keep track of information, things that are valuable and are worth looking at in the future. The recommended program for this is Evernote - a free account allows you 60mb of notes, plus a bunch of other awesome stuff. If you want to go premium, it's only $5 a month. You're going to want to sign up and download this onto your devices - it's an easy way to collect what matters. An extensions is available for Chrome called 'Web Clipper'- so while browsing you can directly send notes to Evernote.
3 rules for processing: 1) process top item first, 2) process one at a time, 3) never put anything back into the inbox.
The challenge for Phase 2 was to clear out my inbox, and I was given four distinct rules.
1. If it's not actionable and not valuable, delete it immediately.
2. If you may want to do it someday, send it to to your task manager
3. If it's non-actionable but is valuable, file in Reference.
4. If it's actionable, send it to your task manager.
Keep in mind, I currently have 3,000 emails - it never used to be like that until... well, I don't know what happened. I guess you can say, life happened?
Just as a review, here are some things to remember: If you can do it, task manager that bad boy. If you want to look at it later, also send it to the task manager. If you want to remember info for the future, reference it - and if it's none of the above. Delete it.
Fast forward several hours, and I've manager to trim my mailbox down to an amazing number of 49 emails. I just reduced my email inbox by 84% - and I have to admit it's much nicer going into my email without seeing that terrifying fout-digit number haunting me.
Challenge: What is the REAL next physical action? In order to move forward with something, the next physical action is something that can be done, but then you realize that you have to contact so-and-so for that, and then you realize you need to be book this, and etc. Once you get to that final step, you have your next physical action. Projects are action items that need to be done through a series of steps. Say you need to remodel your backyard, but you have an old playground set back there and Debbie said she'd take it, well now you contact Debbie to get the playground and now you can really start your project.
Once that big step is done, the rest can be done. The next step, is to assign REALISTIC due dates. This is a bad habit of mine, I think I'm superwoman and I overplan everything, get too stressed about my list, get anxious and then shut down. Coming from experience, listing out the details you need to get a job done is important, and be real with yourself. Leave time to recoup, rest, enjoy your life - you don't need to forget yourself in order to get something done.
Projects: 1) have goals to be achieved, and 2) are time-limited. While Areas of Responsibility: 1) Have standards to be maintained, and 2) are indefinite in duration.
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