You know, whatevs.

Some days you just feel like it isn’t enough.

It rained today as I hid myself within my little cubicle, tapping away at the keyboard as if nothing else mattered. Every so often there would be a mouse click or two followed by even more tapping. Just as I love the sound of rain pounding gently against the roof I also savor the tactile response I get from writing long-winded status reports. I don’t know what it is exactly that makes the typing sound all that alluring. Maybe it’s because I feel I’m being productive.. or at least I sound like it.

My next actions list via Remember the Milk is faithfully displayed on the left most part of the screen… dictating what I’ve to get done and color coded in the order of priority. Orange being first, light powder blue is second, and dark blue is third. Those without priority are simply white and will eventually get its code as the day progresses.

Every few moments I would minimize what I was doing to reveal Lotus Notes behind it. Nine of ten times, there would be at least five to six unread messages. All of which are immediately dealt with in one of five ways: deleted, deferred, responded to, filed away for reference, or added to “in” on my next actions list and color coded as necessary. Then my inbox is returned to zero.

My email folders are organized for efficiency and flexibility. They are first organized by year, then by context, then by project name — which also happens to be prefixed with the corresponding two digit month of which the project was first mentioned. As projects are completed folders are archived into a master repository appropriately labeled Completed. Beyond these I also have a Reference folder and within that are the folder names (in alphabetical order) of people who’s emails I care about.

In the event I ever need to find an email from manager for a project I did in 2011 it would take only seconds.

The response I get is usually, “wow.” But not necessarily in the sense of amazement. The beauty of wow is it could be verbalized in varying degrees of pitch and tone and depending on the combination of the two, the word can range from bewilderment to nerd-ism to it’s-time-to-get-a-life. But this is how I roll. This is how I keep emails under control. This is how I get things done day in, day out. This is how I maintain sanity in fast-paced digital world.