Post 3 in the series: Recommended Productivity Tools
For your physical in box, I recommend the silver steel letter trays that you can get at Target or Amazon. I used to have the plastic black letter trays from Office Depot, but I’ve recently switched over to these because they look a bit better.
As far as you to make the best use of your in box, it’s pretty simple: Put one on the top of your desk.
Some people stack several together and use the lower ones to hold pending items like material to read. I don’t do that because I prefer to only create very short-term, ad hoc pending stacks that I deal with right away. Pending items that need to be held for longer periods of time go into a file drawer (which will be covered when I, finally, get to my posts on filing).
If you have a desk at work and home, then obviously I’d recommend an in box at each location. Since my desk at home is in the basement, I also have an in box upstairs that I can easily toss stuff into.
As far as location goes, I recommend putting your in box on the left side of your desk. This creates a workflow of left to right: stuff to process starts on the left; you process it in the center; stuff that needs to be distributed elsewhere gets put into an “out” pile on the right.
Last of all, the big question here is: Is it “in box,” “inbox,” or “in-box”? I’ve seen all three. But when I think about it, I don’t think I like the looks of “in box” — which is the form I used in this post. So going forward, I’m going to start writing “in-box.” (If you have an opinion, let me know!)
Posts in This Series
- Recommended Productivity Tools: An Introduction
- The Tools You Need to Have (And Where to Keep Them)
- Recommended In Boxes
- Recommended Capture Journals
- Recommended Pens
- Recommended Pencils and Paper Pads
- Recommended Staplers, Staple Removers, and Tape
- Recommended Scissors, Letter Openers, and Post-Its
- Recommended Paper Clips and Super Glue
- Not Recommended: Desktop Organizer Things
- Recommended Chairs and Waste Baskets
- Recommended Labelers and File Folders
- Recommended File Cabinets and Bookshelves