Decide What Needs to be Done

No matter how many inboxes you have, the productivity practice that made the biggest impact for me is in learning how to approach those inboxes.
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What is the plan for tackling the tasks that come your way?
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How do you manage to accomplish your goals, despite the constant noise coming from every direction?
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Productivity amplifies when you look at each item in your inbox as few times as possible. Even it it's only seconds at a time, you waste time every time you look at an item and don't take the action it represents. 

However, trying to finish all of the tasks as you process the inbox isn't productive either. So processing the inbox is a balancing act between touching an items as few times as necessary, and performing the task it represents at the right time.

The way I handle this balancing act - and the practice that has relieved so much stress for me - is to approach the inbox knowing that the first task is simply to make a decision on each item. And there are really only 5 possible decisions to make, which hopefully makes the time I spend making the decision as short as possible.
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Here are the decision possibilities:
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1.

Do the action. Even though I said you can't finish all of the tasks when processing your inbox, if the task is very short, the most efficient thing may be to just do the task and get the item off your list. But be careful in implementing this so-called 2-minute rule. Sometimes I can end up wasting half a day processing inboxes filled with tasks that seem smaller than they really are and aren't all that immediately important. If I feel that the 2-minute rule is taking me down a rabbit hole or being used to procrastinate something I really should be doing, I shut it down. Sometimes, it is more efficient to look at the task again later in the appropriate context.

2.

Defer the action. I loved the book Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden. It gave me the permission I needed to realize that sometimes procrastination is the best productivity practice.

When I defer an action, I add it (or forward it) to my appropriate project in Nozbe so I can clear the Inbox. When I'm ready to work on that project, I'll see the task and either do it or plan it in context of the other tasks in that project, depending on how complicated it is.

More and more, I'm also adding a date and time that I want to do the task, as well as an estimated time for completion. I have Nozbe integrated with my Google Calendar, so having the date/time and estimated time for the task blocks off the appropriate space on my calendar to do that task. (Note to reader, I've just added a task that I'll defer for now: Write blog post on my Nozbe-Google Calendar integration. It will not happen until after the #10stepsbook challenges are over in several weeks, but I'll link it here when I've posted it.)

3.

Delegate it. I've just recently hired a short-term, part-time assistant to help me with a very big project. I'll get better at delegating as I practice, but I can already see how helpful it is!

4.

Store it. Evernote has really helped me cut down on time I spend looking at certain types of items in my inboxes. If I don't need to take action on an item, but I want to keep it, I send it to an Evernote notebook for storage. If I think it might represent an action some day, I add a comment and a reminder to the note, so it will also show up in Nozbe to be added to the appropriate project or my Someday project.

5.

Delete it. There is so much digital noise these days. I'm constantly refining my ability to press the Delete key. If it doesn't add immediate value to one of my current 5-6 priority projects, or I decide it wasn't as good an idea as I thought when I added it, I delete the item and get on with my life. I need to stress the point that collecting your tasks in your inbox and processing them are two very different activities. So as you are making decisions, it's perfectly reasonable to realize that deleting is the best decision for a task. Also, sometimes upon further reflection, I find that I've already captured the task in more comprehensive plans. This is evidence that I use the inbox to get things off my mind. But sometimes I've done that more than once before I actually get to the time when I'm working on that project or task.

Deciding what to do can be a simple micro-second reaction to an item in my inbox. But there is a whole other aspect to deciding what to do that is this: deciding what to do NEXT. Deciding what to do next is the core of successful project planning and completion, and is the most cognitively demanding part of productivity. It's also the story for another day. But don't worry, I've also added that task to my project for this blog to be completed when the time comes!