My friend... I was like you. I had over 9,000 messages in my inboxes. Plural.

I am currently doing inbox zero for both my personal and professional inboxes. That means that on a daily basis I hit zero messages in my inbox.

But alas, during a recent upheaval in my personal life, I let this go for my personal inbox for a while. Then I reinstated it. So the memory of how I did that is fresh in my mind, and I have the opportunity to share that with you.

Inbox zero is not a new idea, but everyone has their own ways of staying there. What follows is my own bag of tricks.

How to transition to inbox zero

1. Set aside an hour or more, just this once, to skim through the last 7 days of email and act on anything important. Important is defined as "if you don't reply to it today something bad will happen." Otherwise... no. Ignore it for now.

2. "Archive" everything. Absolutely everything. Hit "select all" and "archive," not delete. (*) This gets you around the anxiety of Maybe Deleting Something Important. You're not, you're just archiving it, okay? You can search for it later if you really want to.

(If you are not using gmail, fix that, or use something else which offers an "archive" button just as good and convenient.)

Instantly, you are in a much better position to act on the next truly important email that arrives in your life. But you can do better than that. Here's how I stay there on a daily basis.

How to stay at inbox zero

1. Once a day, sit down to do your "inbox zero," as described below. Make this a good time. You've got your coffee and a few minutes before you have to dash off; interruptions are as minimal as you can make them.

If this is your work inbox, just take the time. Your coworkers want you to be on top of your email. (**) If this is your personal inbox and you're a stay-at-home parent, I sympathize with the level of interruption you're dealing with, but again, it's an investment in you that your family ideally will willingly make.

2. Every time you get an email from a mailing list, political cause, etc., either read it right now, delete it on the spot, or unsubscribe. If you are disinclined to read it now, during your designated email time... what do you think the chances are you'll read it, ever? Absolutely friggin' zero. Unsubscribe. Every time you unsubscribe an angel gets its wings.

3. Every email should be replied to, forwarded to someone who can better handle it, acted on right now, deleted, archived for reference, or turned into a TO-DO.

Hint: if there is any extra information you need before you can act on the email, reply and ask for it and hit "archive!" That thread is gone from your inbox until they reply. You've just bought yourself one day, in most cases, before you have to do anything with this again. If the other party never replies, it was not important to them either. And you have documentation of that. You're the responsible one. Move on.

Most things can either be acted on right now, during your inbox zero time, or are unlikely to get done ever, and keeping them around is pointless. The exceptions... the reasonable tasks that take multiple days to complete or require something you won't have until later... belong on your TO-DO list.

4. Do not use your email inbox as a TO-DO list. You need a separate TO-DO list. Paper works surprisingly well, but there are innumerable TO-DO list apps. Even gmail has a little built-in TO-DO list feature tucked away. It's a choice on the "GMail" menu at upper left. There are third-party mobile apps that can work with it, too.

Hint: you can create a simple TO-DO, then archive the message, and search for it later when you need the details to act on the TO-DO item.

I also use calendar reminders in my phone for time-sensitive TO-DOs.

5. If you really, sincerely get emails you don't have to act on right now but would love to read later, create a "read later" folder for fun and edifying things only and move those messages there. This is not for actionable stuff. Actionable stuff, you should act on right now, or create a TO-DO. It is your cookie jar of cool things to read when you feel like it, not guilt trips you really must read. Those... you read. Right now. Or you don't mean it and you should archive them and move on with your life.

6. Accept that you're going to archive some things that turn out to be important later. It's OK. If it really matters to the other party more than you thought, they will ask about it again. In this case you are no worse off than you were before you got on top of your email world. And you're going to do this much less often than you did before.

7. When you get an email in the middle of the day... relax! You can reply to it now, and sometimes you should. But you could also just wait until tomorrow's inbox zero time. The absolute worst case is that you'll deal with it in one day. And that means you don't have to panic and jump on it right now.

Benefits of inbox zero

I hardly ever freak out when I get an email in the middle of the day, or at 3am for that matter. I never have that anxiety that comes from worrying that if I don't act on it this very millisecond, it will be lost forever in my inbox.

Instead I know that I will act on it during my daily inbox zero time.

My friends and coworkers took a little time to adjust to this "once a day" rhythm, but they like it soooo much better than the old "sometimes miraculous, sometimes totally unreliable" Tom.

My anxiety level has dropped because I know I'm responsible. I don't think I'm on top of my shit, I know I am.

And I really like not being a flake.

Plus: bragging rights.

(*) With gmail, "select all" will initially select the current page's worth of messages, but there's a little prompt asking if you want to select all the messages in your inbox. Yes! You do!

(**) Yes, I have the luxury of a job where my coworkers behave rationally, and you may not. My condolences. But I still think this will probably be a net positive for you in terms of Not Getting Fired, as compared to being 6 months behind on email.

Grr. Well, this past few days has been mostly occupied by recovering from an annoying head cold.  So I dunno what my weight is doing. Fortunately the cold was only coming on Wednesday, my last rehearsal, and it's mostly faded now and should be gone Monday, my next rehearsal.

Well, the last two "rehearsals" haven't so much been rehearsals as workshops; basically excerpts from Kristin Linklater's Freeing Shakespeare's Voice book. 

Monday, we started with a warmup exercise, starting below the diaphragm and exercising resonances and sound production from there up to the top of the head, and back down again. The same sort of stuff one would learn from a good voice coach, but focused more on clear & emotive speech production.

Then he gave us words to think about, like "stone" or "sea", and then asked us to feel the sounds that made up the words and then speak them aloud at our own pace. Then asked questions, like "what does it feel like?" or "what colour is it?" and had us use our answers to those questions to modify how we said them. Exploring emotion and thought and how they modify sound production. 

Then he gave us nouns and verbs excerpted from a sonnet, and asked us to say each word by itself, and after that, to start stringing them together and seeing how their proximity modified each other, but still allowing each word to be its own sound.

Wednesday he gave us a monologue and had us start by reciting it silently, but moving our lips in a very exaggerated way. Then we had to whisper it. Then we had to recite only the vowel sounds -- no consonants, exploring the emotion and feelings. Then again just the consonants, exploring the meaning and intellect of the words. (It took much longer to do the consonants.) Then to put everything together a word at a time, then a line at a time.

Then we went into iambic pentameter, and how it should be thought of only as a heartbeat, not a rule. And we worked on some new monologues, taking turns reciting each phrase, and sometimes more than one person at a time, and that was really cool. And that was about all we had time for.

Tomorrow we do our first read through of the play itself, and the two other professional actors will be there also. (The cast mixes three seasoned pro actors [one of whom is also our director] with us community and student players.) It should be very, very interesting. I'm learning a lot.

I've had the new iPhone for a week, a 6S+. It's very, very good. I'm working on my photography app, which I believe I've mentioned in this space before, and hope to get it out before the end of the year. I was also chosen to receive one of the new Apple TV developer kits. I'm not sure what I'll do with it, but I have some ideas.

Last week I noticed my paper journal was missing. I looked for it, but couldn't find it. Not in my purse, not in the messy tote bag I take to work (another story), not in the car, not in my bedroom, not any of the rooms in the house. Not here or there or anywhere. 

I chose not to panic, though I could have left it at work. This would be bad, because I have ranted about my lazy co-worker in said journal. I looked at work. Nope. 

I continued to choose not to panic. 

On Friday afternoon, my phone rang. It was Ted. 

"Were you at Steel City Coffee in Phoenixville last week?" 

"Yes, why?"

"They have your journal. You should go pick it up." 

Fortunately, at some point, I had written Ted's cell phone number in my journal. 

I picked it up today, breathless, embarrassed, and grateful. 

As I walked out, past the itinerant teenagers, I thought, 

Aaaaaannnd... SCENE. 

A sunny day is a welcome recharge. But they go away every night and I begin to doubt myself again. Piece by piece we've been cleaning and throwing things out. But I can't stop feeling empty inside. Now it just looks like clutter in the wrong areas, and I keep staring and shifting and moving things.

After a full check up by the doctor (which included blood work and me climbing the ceilings away from needles) I'm in perfect medical health. Which means all this depression and malaise is mental. And so I'm staring at an email of another offered therapy appointment and having a hard time hitting accept.

I hate that. I'm a person of progress, and I'm not sure how I got so bogged down. But it starts getting darker sooner during this time of the year. And so I don't move as much and I worry my kid, who is lively and beautiful and dances to make me smile. I'm really hoping she doesn't suffer through any of this when they're older.

Yes, sir, that's my baby! Jarnsaxa Rising is LAUNCHED. 

Episode 1: Two Witch Trials

Episode 2: The Hungry Place

It's available on iTunes, if you use Apple's Podcast app. if you use the desktop browser, it doesn't show up. Android users can find it on Pocket Casts. 

or, if you really want the RSS feed, just ask. 

And now... I'm done wrassling with Libsyn for the night. Enjoy, please. 

I had some cheese last night, just a little, and by itself. Well, with some wine. But I also had some lactase. And I don't feel gross this morning.  Although it wasn't much cheese, it's not a contraindication, and possibly good news. Because I like the taste of cheese. And it's good food.

Past couple of days I was doing more motorcycle training, culminating in a test for my full M license. I've been riding on an M2, which is a long-term learner's permit. You have to hold an M2 for about two years before you can test up to an M, but if you don't pass the test within five years, you lose your M2. I suspect the province figures most people will quit riding a bike after a short time and doesn't want people licensed to ride permanently if they're not riding actively.

The M2 exit is a road test, so they give you a radio and an earphone and send you out on your bike and follow you around in a car and tell you what to do, and they grade how safely you did it. There are 418 points you can accrue for fucking up. If you get 26 or more points (or if you break any law, have an avoidable collision with anything, or drop your bike), you fail the test. Perhaps half of the points are variations on "looking at things" like mirrors, over your shoulder, at driveways, at cross streets, at busy businesses like Tim Hortons, over parked cars. (The rest of the points are safety things like which tire track to ride in, when to use your signals and brake lights, not driving on painted lines, etc.) 

The training is optional; one can go to Ontario Drive Test and pay $30 and they will give you an M2 exit test to anyone walking in off the street. And I understand that most people fail. Because they don't know what the tester is really looking for. You could go to the test and obey every law and regulation and fail it miserably because you weren't checking your blind spot during a turn or lane change. So the training, which is $400, is about six hours of riding a motorcycle and being coached on exactly what the test will look for. It's drilling, endless drilling, stop signs, turns, lane changes. 

Check your mirrors. Turn on your signal. Check your blind spot. Change lanes into the correct tire track. Turn off your signal. Check your mirrors. Put on your turn signal. Make sure your brake light is on. Come to a stop. Keep the brake light on. Keep the bike ready to move. Look behind you. Check cross traffic. Check your blind spot. Accelerate briskly but not hastily, turning left into the right tire track of the left lane without driving over any painted lane markings. Turn off your signal. Check your mirrors. Turn on your turn signal. Check your blind spot. Change to the left tire track of the right lane. Turn off your turn signal. Check your mirrors. --- Hours of it.

I passed the test with one point marked off; I didn't switch into the right lane of a two lane road fast enough after a turn. And I felt it wasn't exactly fair, but fair isn't really what was being tested. They emphasized that you should drive safely no matter what the tester told you to do. It's not that the tester told me to do something dumb, it's just that they didn't tell me to move over after having given me a long series of instructions immediately prior. Kind of sucks, but whatever. 

I now have a piece of paper that I can take to the bureaucracy that will get me a permanent M designation on my Ontario driving license. And that's a good thing. 

I have news about the audition for King Lear but I'm not supposed to share it yet.

One Post Wonder has completed its move and the URLs have been changed over.

I'm sure a glitch or two will be found, and I'm sure folks will report them here, or by emailing me, or even via the little bug icon. All of the above are fine.

A security warning is seen when the old personal blog URLs are used, so if you see that, just update your bookmarks to point to the new location of your blog. But you probably just have onepostwonder.com itself bookmarked anyway. And there's no issue there.

I want to thank the folks who very generously donated to help cover the costs of running One Post Wonder. Yes, I did blush.

We should be good for another year. OPW now lives on the same box with boutell.com, which is a big enough site that OPW can pretty much hang out in the margins without significantly increasing my hosting costs. Unless it gets big. In which case, it becomes a business anyway. So we're good there.

Thanks again for your support and understanding. You got me motivated to knock out the whole move in one evening.

And now back to my regularly scheduled locked posts for friends... just like everyone else on One Post Wonder. It's nice being home.

But I didn't used to. There's such a stigma around it and why you go. And the first time I went I lied to them. The 2nd time I lied to myself, and then finally after a few sessions I finally said "I'm paying you a lot of money to help me with something that I'm not being honest about. So. I'm not getting any better. Here's the deal..." 

And it's a lot of hard work, but that's why I'm seeing someone. Because at the root of it all, I'm unhappy with myself.  And I need to figure out why? After a year and a half break I'm finally going again thanks to insurance and it's time to get back on the road to solving things. 

I wish more people had access to it. I wish more people could reach out when they needed. And rather than vilifying it, I choose to be open and support whoever wants to go. I'll update progress as I go.

Writing letters from characters to supporters is harder, but more interesting and fun than I expected.  

Jarnsaxa Rising's teaser clip is now available in iTunes. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/jarnsaxa-rising/id1041736696

we got 40 downloads TODAY. 

I'm flabbergasted with excitement. 

Nine pounds to go. Probably won't get to 190 until the end of the year. And that's okay. I was 220 in April. A pound a week is good steady sustainable progress. Had to take in the drawstring on my fuzzy pjs this morning. I am also looking forward to introducing some very light physical conditioning once the exercise bands I ordered show up. And I should be doing more bike rides while the weather holds. But I've been so busy during the day with all my projects. 

I finished the seventh revision to my stage adaptation of House at Pooh Corner. It's just 132 pages now. Mostly because I removed every bit of non-essential stage direction. People will figure things out. And if they figure out something different than what I had originally put in, that doesn't mean they're wrong. It just means they found a different truth out of Milne's words. 

I auditioned for a staged reading of King Lear yesterday. The production intentionally mixes experienced professional actors (they already cast three roles, including Lear) with community shmoes like me. It went okay, and what was nice is that I didn't recognize anyone else auditioning. But it's a longer rehearsal process for a reading than I'm familiar with (like 8 rehearsals), and it includes some Shakespearean dialogue workshops which I'm eager to participate in. I don't have an answer yet. I hope I get cast!

Moving in the past week or two seemed to switch from something we hope do to someday to something we will do when we are able. It's best for both of our careers. While it makes sense that there are many more opportunities for strategic IT management work in Toronto, it is even more the case that if I ever hope to make money from my art -- any kind of art -- that I have to go to a city where people actually care about art. Because, I'll be frank, Waterloo Region is a hole when it comes to any kind of creative endeavour. No, I stand by this statement. I could rant on it for hours. 

I have a slightly swollen lower eyelid the past day or two. It's tender in one spot. I'm figuring it's a nascent stye, and I'm hoping it doesn't develop much further. Styes are no fun.