[...] I’ve said in another post, I try so hard to answer those emails quickly, but those work emails so often get in the way, which makes this [...]

That 10 minute rule is something I need to start doing… I’m pursuing my masters currently, but I’m also working full time and I have two 4 week old boys at home… I really feel like I’m being tugged in all these different directions! It is so easy to push things off… but I need to make ‘em a priority.

That’s another reason why cutting down the distractions of email and Reader are going to totally be helpful!

I’m so glad to hear I inspired you to clean up a bit! The unsubscribing is so huge. I was getting so much junk from various web sites I had signed up with to try their online services and whatnot. Some were too difficult to unsubscribe from, but it makes such a difference.

You’ll love the auto-label then archive. Another life-saver.

Ugh, the feed reader… I had more time a year ago, and I’m slowly coming to realize that I need to shave those feeds. I usually have over 1,000 unread posts, but that’s because I have a “trash can” of posts I don’t have time to read anymore but I really enjoy reading. Someday, I might start reading them again, but until then, the first thing I do when I load Google Reader is empty my “C-list.” Then it’s down to a manageable situation again. :) Maybe a C-list or Someday list could help you with your interests. The first and only rule is that you MAAR (Mark all as read) first thing.

I’ve been using the “10 minute rule” on my PhD, but it’s a 1-hour rule. I work on it for at least 1 hour a day. Sometimes, I struggle to stay focused for that hour (usually this happens on the days I teach…), but sometimes, I work for 90 minutes or 2 hours. Or more! It’s definitely a good rule.

My life is much easier when I DO keep a zero’d out inbox…though I don’t always zero it out completely. Right now, I have 9 (already read) emails in my inbox… 4 of them sent to myself that are essentially collections of things I was doing online but didn’t have time to read or finish, some stuff for Grad school that really should be transferred to THAT email address but hasn’t been yet, and some info about my own blog.

Almost all of those emails are tagged, ‘cept for a few of the ones I sent myself that really don’t have a proper tag.

I was inspired, though, by your post to clean out my life a bit.

I did go through and unsubscribe from several emails that I have been getting that I just delete… and I get a whole bunch. I have 37 labels and I have a whole bunch of filters set up to drop new emails right in the labels… already archived, so they skip my in box. This helps a ton… but it still takes a while to sift through all of those, so that’s what I’ve been cutting back on.

I also have shaved off some of my RSS feeds in my reader. I have 13 different categories that I’ve got several different feeds in… and I started cutting back on the ones that I really don’t read. I also took some of the emails that I was getting and am choosing the RSS option instead of the email option for things that HAVE this option. This is good because email comes first… and my Reader is just secondary. It DOES take a while to sift through when I have 230 unread posts, like I did earlier today when I hadn’t looked at my Reader for 5 days… but that’s part of the cutting down, too. Which ones to I really want to read?

Part of the problem for me is that I’ll get really interested in a topic and I’ll exhaustively research it… and I’ll get a whole bunch of extra info coming in to me via email or through the Reader. Because I spent time on it previously, and because it interests me, I (almost) feel an obligation to continue to get those things… even if it doesn’t QUITE interest me now like it did (I mean, what if I miss something that would be really meaningful later?!).

I’ve gotta just get over that, though, I think… I may have to create a rule, if I delete X 3 times, then it’s time to get rid of it…

My mom had a thing kind of similar to your mom’s “elephant” thing… and it had to do with picking up my room when I was little. She used to say that I should pick up 10 things before I went to bed… I usually ended up picking up more than that and my room got clean… but it wouldn’t have if I didn’t carve out the time for those 10 things!

[...] a healthy dose of skepticism. I am pretty busy with teaching, The Diss, and running; I can barely keep up with all my emails, how was I supposed to blog every day for a [...]

I just read an eBook about why and how to keep an Inbox Zero, and it has really convinced to me to give it another try. We’ll see how it goes…

As for checking the e-mail multiple times a day… I can see why that would be a question for you. Personally I know that e-mail can be a distraction, or a way to avoid other work that I should be focusing on at the time. On the other hand, I think if I was having a hard time responding to all my e-mail, I’d rather deal with my e-mail a few messages at a time than see an intimidating bloc of messages when I opened up my inbox.