I saw this video of David Allen's office system on Unclutterer earlier this week, and it reaffirmed to me how essential the Inbox is.
I've already written about the In/Out/To File sorter and how it functions as part of the Sorted Seven, but I don't think I've gone into what a difference the Inbox can make in your work and life.
In the video, Allen has quite a few information gathering tools (he calls them "buckets," which I've never liked for some reason): his PDA, his notebook, his voice recorder and his briefcase. But he has only one Inbox. There's a reason for that.
If you have a lot of places to look for new stuff, you're going to expend more time and mental energy looking for that stuff than using it. And the more sources of new stuff you have, the more imperative it is that they eventually go to one place.
It does take a few extra seconds to take the receipts out of your bag, to take the pages from the notebook, to fish out the recorder or PDA and put them in the Inbox. But you'd need to do that anyway if you were using them with no Inbox. And this way, you know exactly where they are. It's just that it takes a bit of extra effort to build up the habit of putting stuff in the Inbox, at first, anyway.
Another essential habit to build is visiting the Inbox several times a day and doing your best to empty it every day. As Allen says in the video, he sometimes has to keep stuff in the Inbox for a couple of days, but it's much easier to finally clean it out if the couple days' worth of stuff is the only stuff in there (and not the days' or weeks' worth of stuff that preceded it).
So yes, there is some initial effort and some very minor maintenance effort involved in maintaining the Inbox. But that time investment has some great returns:- You will know where all your new information is rather than wondering if it's in that other folder or briefcase.
- You will have the resources you need to enter new information into your electronic or paper files rather than pausing to dig out your PDA.
- You won't have to ponder "What next?"; it's right there in your Inbox.
- Once you're comfortable with the system, you can explain it to other people so they'll know where to set new stuff in your office rather than risking it being buried in a pile.
One box (and one system, and the habit of using it) can do all that for you. It's a pretty good deal.
What about you? Have you embraced the Inbox, or have there been problems along the way? Let me know in the comments!
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