Okay so 99% of GTD advice is about how to “process” your inbox, and that’s awesome, even my own basic version starts by making an inbox list and sorting it into steps and goals.
And getting good at GTD means getting good at sorting the inbox out.
But it’s never going to be completely “free”. It’s always going to be one decision after another and that’s going to be mentally exhausting and totally dreaded.
I’ve de-emphasized weekly reviews in my posts because the review is usually what trips people up. But the point of the review is to make sure your lists are current and that every project has a next step (or is done… or officially abandoned). That’s something you’re gonna have to do eventually and hard enough even if you don’t have a massive inbox waiting for you every week.
That’s why my advice is going to be to use your inbox as little as possible! Put as few things as possible in there! I might’ve said before that the bad habit to bypass the capture step and instead write things directly onto project list and next actions list has the drawback that it can lead to letting too much things into your life and leading to overwhelm and that warning still holds so you need to A. be super vigilant about what you write in there when you add it, and B. be ready to give up on projects and remove them. But if you promise you can do that, the “bad” habit is a heck of a lot less “bad” than letting a bunch of unmade decisions pile up in a huge inbox.
Tossing stuff into your inbox is an amazing tool when you’re overwhelmed so doing it “as little as possible” does not mean “never”. It’s like magic to me that the scribbled note at a party or quick memo when I was super busy, that I can salvage that and turn that into a life-saving stitch in time to save nine once I finally get around to processing that inbox. Jamming stuff into the inbox tbd later is a necessity as a quicksave that lets you fully focus on your work, your art, the people around you. But doing it too much creates “decision debt”, it’s like the GTD equivalent of skipping sleep.
This is heresy in the GTD world because the entire point is to get good at inbox sorting and at the daily review. “Don’t fear the inbox.” And yes, thanks to practicing GTD, I have gotten so much better at it. But it’s never gonna become easy breezy. Mind like water still takes time and effort. For some tasks, there’s value in batching things and doing a bunch of them at once once you’re in that particular flow. For some people who aren’t as decision fatiguable as I am, inbox review might be one of those task, and an end-of-day sweep of an inbox they’ve tossed vague junk into all day might be the most efficient and best use of their time. But for me it’s having to move a mountain all at once. I’d rather try my best to keep the inbox as empty as possible before it stacks up, knowing that sometimes life happens and the inbox piling up is going to be a good thing, a caretaker of all the yan, tan, and tethera of your life while you’re under the ice.
Having to sort through a huge inbox is an inescapable part of GTD, I’m not denying that. When you first bootstrap GTD, when you’re returning to it after having fallen off, or when your life circumstances drastically change and turn everything upside down. I could try to sell you some other productivity method that didn’t do that but I honestly don’t think that would make your life any simpler or better. Reviewing the inbox is core to GTD. I’m just saying I’m trying to do it as little as possible and “bypassing” the inbox when I can; as long as I’m making conscious and deliberate decisions about what goes on my lists.