I don’t normally read the huge morass of comments that result from the average blog post, but the conversation thread on Mr Wilson’s recent email post was fascinating to me as inbox zero is something I have been struggling to get to over the last few months. The basic principle is that the inbox should be empty at least once every day.

Some of my colleagues manage it on one or more of their accounts (we normally have at least three each, one for the project, one for the company and any personal ones). I haven’t yet managed it on any of my accounts for more than about a day-per-month at a time. That is to say, I haven’t managed it at all. About a third of the way down the comment section on his post, Mr Wilson replies that he doesn’t use a todo list, instead he uses email as his todo list. I often thought I was the only person who tried to do this (if not consciously), and I thought that this was the reason I was failing at inbox zero. I had one of those “I’m not alone in my insanity” moments on reading his comments. I even occasionally send emails to myself to enter things into my list.

Other peoples’ reactions to my lack of a real todo list (distinct from my inbox) mirrors the many comments on Fred’s post where they have asked questions like ‘how do you do it’ and ‘can you write us a blog post on it’. I haven’t seen a follow up from Mr Wilson, but I am determined to work out how I can make this inbox zero combined with a todo list thing work. I am going to start with this from Mr Hyatt for some starters for ten.