Daily Review 1: Setting Up Your GTD Inboxes And Developing An Inbox Checklist

I thought I would kick off my first daily review by going over what I did today to set up my GTD inboxes. Today was a travel day for me so I didn't have much time to actually spend time collecting but did want to share with you one of the first things I think you should do and that is make a list of your inboxes to clarify exactly where everything enters your system. I think it's important to make a list of all of your inboxes because what we will do down the road is incorporate them within our daily review. By having them all included in a list, you also remove the chance that you will forget to check one. This is an important step because it clears your mind of having one additional bit of overhead that you'll need to remember later. This overhead drags your system down. Commit to getting everything and I mean everything out of your head. Your first list might not be complete and that's ok. Just start making one. Overtime, you'll get them all.

I think that what you will find is that you have a lot more inboxes than you think you do. In particular, you'll find that you have way more digital inboxes than paper ones and way more digital inboxes than you thought.

It's also important to include things that you haven't thought of as inboxes like your mailbox, your car, your wallet or anyplace that you stuff comes in. As far as electronic inboxes go, email is the obvious one, but then there are things like Facebook, text messages and so on.

Once you have started your checklist, you'll pay more attention to what inboxes you really have and you'll eventually have a complete list.

The next step then is to see if you can get rid of any inboxes or consolidate them in some fashion. I know one of the first things that I did was consolidate all of my voicemail message into my gmail account so I didn't have as many phones to check. I also got rid of some.

Finally, the last thing you want to do is put this list in an order that you CHECK it. I typically put these lists into easiest to check and empty to hardest thereby creating momentum for myself in getting them all to empty.

I talk more about my inboxes in an audio that is attached to this post and also give you access to my current list of inboxes. To view these you need to be a member of the site. For more information, on membership, click the link at the top of the page called: Become a Black Belt.

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My Inbox List

[S3AUDIO file='audio/drpodcast1.mp3']

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