This post is part of the Inbox Zero series.

You've doubtless already discovered your inbox won't stay at zero -- and it shouldn't. As I said yesterday, this is a process, not some miraculous one-time event like a tonsillectomy or a Jandek concert. And you can't just wave a magic wand every couple weeks and make it all go away. Why not use the august occasion of your newly empty inbox as the chance to start mending your ways going forward?

As a person who has done the near-impossible and managed to establish a temporary beachhead against the occupying email army, you are your own best expert in what needs to change to keep things together, but I'd like to share a few things that have helped me stay email-sane (most of the time).

Just a GTD quickie, but something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

David Allen defines next actions as “the next physical, visible activity that needs to be engaged in, in order to move the current reality toward completion.” [ch. 2, pg. 34; emphasis mine]. I’m finally realizing that this subtle change in thinking can have profound effects on the way you look at the stuff in your life.

Merlin’s First Desktop Tour on Vimeo (Full HD Version)

After a recent “Most Days” episode, several people asked to see what all's in my menu bar, so I made this little video using ScreenFlow. It's a “proof of concept.” A “pilot program,” if you like. Again: an experiment. (Hint: this looks way better in full HD)

Watch this space next week for more info on these apps, plus discount codes and more.

I had a Psychology teacher back at New College (who's now apparently an expert in the Klingon language), who used to talk about how the human body had these ±90-minute cycles. And that if you could become aware of yours, you could do Great Things -- particularly because you could learn the optimal time to snag a nap versus, say, try to cure small-cell carcinoma.

Today, I’ll be attending David Allen’s GTD: The Roadmap here in SF. Although, I’ve been yammering about Getting Things Done for months, this will be the first time I’m getting the story straight from The David. Really looking forward to that.

I know new folks arrive here every day, so it seems like an opportune time to look back at some of my favorite GTD posts from the earlier days on 43F. They’ll be familiar to many of you but — as someone who re-read Getting Things Done this weekend — I think it never hurts to go back and review.

Also, I’ll report back soon on what I pick up today.

Filters and scripts can greatly minimize the manual processing you do each day as well as way cut down on unnecessary interruptions. The trouble comes when you're filtering so much stuff (especially via "sender" and "subject" filters) that you end up scattering useful and timely updates into a jillion different places out of view. This can be that rarest of beasts where you've actually automated too much.

Instead, focus on creating filters and scripts for any noisy, frequent, and non-urgent items which can be dealt with all at a pass and later. Depending on what you consider noise, this could probably include:

This is the final installment of a three-part series looking back on a year of doing Getting Things Done. Part 1: The Good Stuff; Part 2: The Stuff I Wish I Were Better At.

So amazing, so illegal. What are we going to do with you, future?

That's my pal, Jonathan Coulton, remarking on the disruptively talented Kutiman, who has made an astounding series of YouTube video remixes that's lighting up the web and (one imagines) generating a lot of wood amongst our nation's libidinous entertainment litigators.

Here's Kutiman's "The Mother of All Funk Chords" (link includes credits for each video):

Quicksilver triggers might seem like one more enigma inside of a riddle from the mind of our mysterious benefactor, Alc0r. Although writing documentation appears to be Alc0r's only kryptonite, triggers are actually pretty well described on the Blacktree wiki. Still, it feels like relatively few people I encounter are using them (most of my friends don't seem to even realize they exist). Since triggers have already been nicely introduced in some detail by Dan, I won't duplicate his efforts.

So, what's a trigger and why do I care?

Simply put, triggers let you associate a custom key combination or mouse gesture with any command you'd otherwise access via conventional methods in Quicksilver's paned interface. Once recorded, these triggers can be invoked any time manually or even programmatically (like, by a QS timer or a logical "when THIS happens"-type event).

This, as I've said before, is just huge. QS already gives you instant access to virtually any corner of your Mac with a couple keystrokes; but attaching that power to an intuitive keyboard command just takes things to another (yes! yet! another!) level.

I'll talk about mouse triggers a bit more in a future post, but for now, in the interest of spreading the word on this under-utilized piece of genius, here are a few ways I'm using keyboard triggers to control my Quicksilver world.

(A small favor: please thoroughly read the trigger documentation and Dan's post before asking for help with Trigger setup)