Back when I worked in the same office as Benson, I was treated to a stream of interesting and cool personal productivity philosophies. Benson is one of those lifehacker folks who's always interested in eking the last bit of accomplishment from his day, and he was reading about the Getting Things Done methodology before most people knew what a 'context' was.

I've taken brief stabs at the GTD way of organizing life, but I'm not sure it's a good fit for the mix of tasks that I usually have on my plate. Some of the tips, though, are pure gold. Write down stray thoughts and to-dos religiously, so that you can trust they're captured rather than stressing about remembering them... That's a huge one I've done for years, and it's nice to see someone explain why it takes such a load off.

Now, I'm also taking a stab at InBox Zero, another GTD-esque personal organizing tactic advocated by cool Mac guy and productivity guru Merlin Mann. Yesterday afternoon, I had about 4700 emails in my inbox, 2000 of them unread. I comforted myself with the idea that I needed them all at my fingertips, and that Mail's searching made it easy to find what I needed.

Lies.

In reality, it meant that the huge email pile grew and grew, and anything I didn't deal with in a day or three was lost in the mists of time. Since there was so MUCH of it, the Inbox lost its usefulness as a tool. I started pruning things, answering stuff that I knew needed fast responses, and caught the bug. As of this morning, I am at... Inbox Zero.

I'm hoping the 'new car smell' of this approach won't wwear off too quickly. I will say that it's refreshing to know that just looking at my inbox tells me what stuff is coming down the pipe now, rather than presenting me with an infinitely scrolling list of past tasks. It gives me a good reason to toss the unimportant stuff, and anything that remains is an obvious sign that I Need To Do Something before tossing it in the archive.

Will it help in the long term? Only time will tell...