“Inbox Zero” by Merlin Mann

Merlin Mann is one of the biggest and coolest lifehackers today. Lifehacking is just a hip techie way of speaking about productivity, but it accounts especially for the ridiculous amount of information through which we increasingly have to sift. Internet is cool, part 2… The amount of cool stuff that people out there are creating in this vein (lifehacking) is mind-boggling.

I came across this video of a presentation he gave at Google. It’s about how to process email. Good stuff, even for pastors, many of whom are becoming lifehackers in their own right. I’m not exactly one yet, but I REALLY need to implement some of this stuff. Okay, all of it.

Here’s  an interesting tidbit or two… He touches on this toward the end. I think I’m about to declare “email bankruptcy.” Here are a couple good links about this: 43 Folders: Email Bankruptcy and 43 Folders: The Email DMZ. This whole lifehacking and email bankruptcy phenomenon is quite interesting. It’s part of a larger issue, even concern, about how to navigate the information overload that we all experience. At the very end Merlin touches on how people even need an “information priest.” Now, of course, churchgoers in Greeneville, TN aren’t nearly in the same situation informationally as “knowledge workers” but they are nonetheless in need of theological filters for the sheer volume of stuff coming at us every day. Drucker and Toffler had it right. And even in relatively rural(ish) (OK, relative to our previous home, suburban Chicago) G’Vegas there is a very small percentage of people who actually work the land.