#2 of 7 Reasons to Keep the Inbox Empty

#2: Avoids multiple handling of e-mails

One of the biggest productivity problems with email is that people read the same email message 2, 3, 5 or even 10 times BEFORE they take action on it! Even then, the message is still often left in the in-box (the same thing often happens with all the various bits of paper handled every day).

As a result, it now takes longer to reply to an incoming e-mail, since so many other messages are already in the inbox awaiting replies. This backlog of e-mail also means it takes longer to find a specific message. Sorting may not help much, since something like a ‘sort by sender’ may show numerous other, older messages sent by the same person, all sitting in the inbox.

Your time is too valuable!

Your time is far too limited and valuable to ever look at any new message more than once! An empty inbox, achieved by learning how to handle each message only once, allows you to keep up with your workload, meet deadlines and saves you having to come in early, work through lunch, stay back late or use weekends to ‘catch up’ with all your email.

Wouldn’t you rather spend time doing the stuff you love outside of work hours, rather than trying to catch up with e-mails you’ve already read? You can avoid multiple handling of e-mail by using the 4D method to handle each message only once, get your inbox empty and stay up to date with your workload.