Often, some of the best ideas come from just hearing how other people do things. So I found it illuminating to read about the categories that Churchill divided his incoming paperwork into in Churchill on Leadership.
Seeing this illustrates how it can be helpful to pre-sort things before tackling them (whether electronic or physical). Here are his categories:
- Top of the box (most important or urgent)
- Foreign office telegrams
- Service telegrams
- Periodical returns (regular reports he had requested)
- Parliamentary questions
- For signature
- To see
- General Ismay (reports from chief of staff)
- Answers other (other people besides Ismay)
- Ecclesiastical
- Weekend (low priority items to get to on the weekend)