I was wondering about inbox best practices? Do you guys like to use inbox as a temporary buffer before you sort the times to where they really below (i.e. like downloads folder on desktop)? Or do you like to leave misc tasks in inbox? I’ve been doing the latter but now my inbox was swollen like crazy and I’m thinking I could be mistaken.
What do you think/do?
You can use the Inbox for whatever you want, that’s the beauty of software.
GTD describes an inbox as a collection place for items before they are processed. for GTD you should process your inbox “regularly” It’s up to you to decide how often is regular enough for you.
I process my inbox in OF once a day to ensure that tasks are allocated to projects and contexts and available to be worked on.
While I realize I can do ‘anything’. I would like to hear best practices. It sounds like my hunch was right and that I should categorize these into projects otherwise it becomes a jungle.
Thanks for your input.
My inbox is where everything goes before it becomes “something”
I drop everything in there (usually through drafts) and sort it out once per day (daily startup review), and do a large inbox / brain-dump / agenda sweep every Friday morning (weekly review)
For me the inbox is essential, I need to get ideas/actions/tasks/thoughts out of my head and in to my inbox asap so they don’t take up any cognitive energy I need elsewhere.
My best practice is that I need the GTD system (OmniFocus as the heart of the system) to be trusted. Meaning when I return to my system everything is in it and I am presented with the next thing to do, all the time. This needs a Routine.
I use the Inbox indeed for collecting all the stuff (including email that needs more than 4 minutes of work) but I have a Routine in the morning (Reveille) and at the end of the day (Closure) to clean out the Inbox. In this way, my system remains “trusted”. I have written a blog post about the concept here.
I even use as Ring widget to determine if I did all the routine tasks (green ring = trusted, in this case I need to do 10 actions more (weekly review) to achieve a trusted system):
But the great things about OmniFocus is that it can adapt to your needs.
Saw your to-do reading list item :-)
this 15 mins summary is also great
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