On CD4 of David Allen's Getting Things Done... FAST CD Set he challenges everyone to get to empty in their email inbox. I did it just now. I don't know when it will happen again, so I thought I better document it. Ahh that feels good.
Not long ago, I had over 7,000 emails in my inbox. I just kept emails around kind of like piles on a desk. I've been working on it for a while now and was down to 9 in my inbox today. Then I happened upon Jon Aquino's post and saw his screenshot of his empty inbox. I looked at my 9 and thought, hey, I can do that too!
The only catch is that the minute you clear your inbox, you better review your Action folder because there are next actions in there. I opened it up. Only 107 emails in there. ;-). That's better than the undefined 7,000...
I haven't attended the GTD 2-day seminar, so this 8-CD set that sells for $89 is great for motivation. Of course, I've got it on my iPod and mostly listen there. But whenever I feel like I need some extra motivation, these CD's hit the spot as a backdrop for me while I work on maintenance (collection and processing).