I’m a month in on INBOX ZERO. It’s been a good experience.

I spend less time staring at a list of things I need to deal with at some point and am only looking at new things that need attention. I like not having a backlog of things sitting on my shoulders weighing me down.

I’ve also had to break myself of the “switching to the inbox for a distraction” habit, but that’s definitely a good thing. I still peek over at my dock for an unread indicator, but that’s definitely a habit improvement – even a small one. It keeps me more focused on the task at hand.

The main discipline to making this work seems to be making hard decisions about what needs to happen with something. It helps to force yourself to make these decisions instead of kicking the can down the road.

Also, I’ve had to accept that some emails/actions require a laptop. I’d love to keep my inbox clean from my mobile devices, but they are sometimes only sufficient for triage.

I’m going to see if I can keep it up for another month.