Last year I visited Brisbane, Australia. One night in the city centre a guy approached me and asked me if I could take a picture of him in front of a Christmas tree. After I agreed he did not give me his camera instead he handed me just his memory card. So I put it into my camera and took the picture.

Afterwards I was impressed about the idea of just traveling with a memory card and basically "outsourcing the camera". It is amazing how much you can sometimes simplify things. This guy definitely kept it simple stupid. Unfortunately when looking into the world of software I have to assume that most engineers never got that lesson.

I have to admit I am not the best person in answering emails in the world. Especially if they pile up I am in trouble. However over the years I continuously adapted and improved my strategy of handling my daily email workload. I started out with just answering them. Then after entering the corporate world for the first time, the amount of received mails quickly increased and I realized that organizing them in folders is a good idea.

This is all nice and easy but I always forgot one final thing: An empty inbox. All email programs and web clients I know come with a special folder called inbox where new emails are displayed. While I have always sorted mails into folders I never fully emptied my inbox. So I never had this good feeling of accomplishing something.

But a series of posts named "Inbox Zero" over at 43 Folders made me think about my approach to answering mails. Now, I keep all my mails in my inbox until I have processed or answered them. Afterwards I move them from the inbox into a folder. For doing so I created a new "general" folder which serves as a place for all mails which do not belong to a certain category or for which it makes no sense to create a new category.

It sounds like a trivial thing to do but it can make a big difference to how you feel about your mails. I highly recommend the "Inbox Zero" campaign. It offers a lot of useful tips about organizing and processing your mails.