One of my resolutions for 2007 is to try and be more productive with my time and such. Crazy, I know, but there it is. For too long I’ve been cursed by an overflowing inbox, and too many open links in my browser. All crying out for my attention. Too often I’d waste time starring at them all, then just turn away in despair. Not now I’d think. But when?

Late in ’06 my friend Sam was over for dinner. She saw the state of my inbox and was shocked. Aren’t you using inbox-zero, she said? I didn’t know what she was on about exactly, but as my email continued to pile up over the holiday break, I resolved to find out.

So after investing a few hours reading thru Merlin Mann’s inbox-zero site I was onboard. It’s all really simple when you think about it, but that’s the point. It’s a set of simple ways to limit the attention burden of all the email you receive. I’m not going to try and relay all the hints and tips he provides.

The most basic one I’ve adopted though is using Filters and Labels in Gmail to archive all the various automatic emails I receive. And its amazing how affective it is. By just not being in my immediate inbox, but rather in Label folder on the sidebar, I feel no pressure to read them at all. It also allows me to chunk up my time. Rather than being distracted by that new, say Ebay notification, I can go through the last X of them when I have an appropriately spare moment.

It must be said this is a process, not a solution. But each time I subscribe to something new, I can automatically set up a filter for it. And when I get new (unfiltered) automatic emails, I choose whether I really want them to come to my immediate attention, or should they be waiting til later. After all, that GoogleAlert I have on chimps isn’t that important. And I can’t say I’m un-subscribing from any of my various automatic notifications, so there’ll always be an attention expense there.

I’m trying to apply the same process with my browser. Session-saver is both a blessing and curse. I think my record last year may have been as many as having 30 open tabs at one time. All there while I decide whether to a) finish reading them b) link to them c) blog them or d) keep open for some future blog post. This is expensive not only in terms of attention costs, but also time as well.. those few extra seconds as it reloads all the tabs each time the browser is re-opened add up, and is sometimes annoying.

With my new discipline I now force myself to make a decision before navigating away from a website. Before I close the tab I think is this crucial at all? Will I save it to del.icio.us, blog it, or stick a link and some notes in a draft blog post. Now, I rarely have more than ten tabs open in Firefox at a time, and usually often only the three or four standard ones (for me – Gmail, Bloglines, Google/IG and the forum du jour).

These simple things combined have really helped to let me focus on what I need to get done. Hopefully ’07 will be quite the productive year. Thanks Sam!