Very cool, the GTD thing treats the inbox strictly as “incoming hub” so theoretically nothing should be there after you’ve looked at it. The idea is, you get the message, and if its something you can do in less than 2 min, do it. Otherwise process it based on context and action (eg, “at the office” “do this next”) type of thing.

So in my case, an empty inbox doesn’t mean I’m done. It means I’m done sorting out the stuff I have to do for the day/week/month, and where I need to do it, office, home, shop, errands. After my inbox is clean, I move to “next action” for the context I need to work on next. I’ll explain this in an upcoming post.

Whichever method you use (work of inbox, or work of contexts & actions) keeping an inbox clean will help you keep your sanity, especially when you get 300+ messages a day.