The capture habit stuck brilliantly. Voice notes in the car, quick text on the phone, scribbles in a notebook, all of it lands in one inbox. The problem is the inbox has 180-odd items going back three weeks and I have no idea what to do with them. Half are one-word notes I no longer understand. It feels worse than not capturing at all because now I know how much I'm dropping.
Worth naming what's underneath this: processing means deciding, and deciding is more tiring than capturing. That's why the inbox grows. Doing it at a fixed low-stakes time, with a drink, when nothing else is expected of you, makes it much more likely to happen than trying to be disciplined about it at 4pm.
That reframe is helpful. I'd been treating it as filing when it's actually a pile of small decisions.
Fix the one-word notes at the point of capture, not at the point of processing. Give yourself six extra words: not just Sarah, but ask Sarah about the March invoice. It costs three seconds in the car and saves you the entire archaeology problem later.
Voice notes especially. Say the context out loud, you have infinite words available and no keyboard to fight.
Cut the number of inboxes too. Four capture channels means four things to remember to empty, and in practice you'll empty two of them. One digital inbox and one paper notebook is about the limit for most people.
@boring_portfolio · 8mo ago · 3 replies
Processing is a separate habit from capturing, and it needs a scheduled slot the same way capture needed a trigger. Fifteen minutes at the end of each day beats two hours on Sunday, because the one-word notes are still decipherable on the day you wrote them.
When you process, every item gets exactly one of four outcomes and you're not allowed to leave it in the inbox:
Delete is the one people don't use enough. For the three week backlog, honestly, delete anything older than ten days without reading it carefully. If it mattered, it'll come back.
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@boring_portfolio · 8mo ago
That's the normal outcome. The backlog is nearly always fear rather than value, and the ten day rule just makes the decision for you.
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@goldenhourgus · 8mo ago
Ten day rule got me from 180 to 34 in about twelve minutes and I don't miss any of them.
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