Today, I hit “Zero Email Bounce”.  There is absolutely nothing in my inbox.

I have been working at Microsoft for 11 years, 1 month, and 29 days.  And, I have never had zero items in my inbox ever during that time.  I haven’t even come close.  While I have hit 1000 a couple times in my life, I usually am somewhere between 200 and 400.

After reading Omar’s blog, I decided to buy that little book he keeps talking about and try it out.  I’m not even done the thing and it’s already helping.

I actually tried to get to “ZEB” about two weeks ago.  The only reason I couldn’t do it is because of my lack of discipline in just using my inbox for untriaged stuff.  I found myself spinning on a few things, and wimping out and keeping stuff in my inbox “because I’ll get to it in a little bit”.  But, I tried a bit harder, and it worked.

The #1 benefit is that, when I turn off my computer and go and do something else, like hang out with my son, read a book, or go for a walk with my dog, I simply am not thinking about work.  Because, all my work is nice and organized, waiting for me when I return. 

Anyone that has wasted more than 30 minutes of their life worrying about work when they should be having fun doing something else, please go out and buy this book.  Heck, if you ask nicely, I’ll buy it for you.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0142000280/qid=1128055795/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-5876265-8060848?v=glance&s=books

The real test will be in about a month to see if I'm keeping it up.  It's a bit of a struggle to get Outlook to do things the way I want.  For instance, if you create a custom view for Tasks, you can only have one sort key.  So, you can sort by priority, or by due date, but you can't sort by both.  If someone from Outlook-land is listening, please let me know if there is a workaround for this.