It’s been a while but I’m sort of back in harness after my vacation (even if actually at home in my pyjamas). One of the issues that always occurs after a period away is dealing with the email after a period away. To this end, this video by Merlin Mann of 43folders may help. It provides some useful tips about how to deal with after-vacation email as well as the ongoing problem of dealing with email on a daily basis. It comes down to a simple strategy for processing email: empty the email inbox every time that you visit it. You do this by some variation of a processing procedure that does one of these five things with each message:
delete (or archive)
delegate
respond
defer
do
Watch the video for more detail and for the interesting discussion (with Google knowledge workers) and be inspired!
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=973149761529535925&hl=en-GB