How many inboxes should I have?

Allen says: as few as possible, realistically. Mail, a physical tray, the app — that is already three. The goal is to bring each to zero once a day.

Is email a GTD inbox?

No. Email is the inbox of other people's priorities. Your inbox is where you yourself drop ideas and open loops. You may feed it from email, but you decide what passes through.

What if the inbox grows to 100 items?

Sign you are not processing daily. Do a reset: whole inbox → Someday. Start at zero. Not a failure, just maintenance.

How long does processing take?

Daily — 5–15 minutes. Weekly — 30–60. If more, you are probably designing projects during processing instead of just classifying.

GTD Inbox — empty head, one bucket

In Getting Things Done (2001) David Allen describes the inbox as the only place where everything requiring attention lands: emails, ideas, requests, unfinished conversations. You do not organise in flight — you dump, and classify once a day. Sounds simple but solves a concrete problem of the brain: it will not let go of a task until it is sure the task will not be forgotten.

How it works

1
Everything goes to the inbox
No priorities, no categories. Call the dentist, Friday report, buy a gift. Goal: empty head, one bucket.
2
Process the inbox once a day
Allen uses one question: does this require an action? No → archive, someday, trash. Yes → next action, project, delegate, or calendar.
3
The 2-minute rule
If the next action takes less than 2 minutes, do it now. Queueing something that short costs more than doing it.
4
Weekly review
Once a week walk the lists: projects, waiting-for, someday. That is where the system regenerates.

Why it works

Zeigarnik (1927) observed that unfinished tasks occupy working memory better than finished ones. That is the night-time “I have to remember…” The brain guards open loops because it does not know you have an external system.

Masicampo and Baumeister (2011) showed experimentally that simply writing a plan for a task reduces intrusive thoughts about it — the effect appears without execution, the decision of when and how is enough. That is exactly what the GTD inbox does.

Sources

Allen, D. (2001). Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, Penguin.
Zeigarnik, B. (1927). Über das Behalten von erledigten und unerledigten Handlungen, Psychologische Forschung, 9.
Masicampo, E. J., Baumeister, R. F. (2011). Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals, JPSP, 101(4).

When this method does NOT work

GTD demands review discipline — without it the inbox becomes a second mailbox full of junk. Allen himself admits the system starts working after a few weeks of consistency. If your work is 90% reactive (support, parent of a small child), classic GTD is heavy — the inbox alone, without the rest of the system, is often enough.

In TaskAura

The inbox has a global keyboard shortcut and a mobile quick-capture — type in two seconds, classify later. AI suggestions help propose a tag, context or matrix quadrant, but you decide; nothing lands in a project without your acceptance.

Try it free

Frequently asked questions

How many inboxes should I have?: Allen says: as few as possible, realistically. Mail, a physical tray, the app — that is already three. The goal is to bring each to zero once a day.
Is email a GTD inbox?: No. Email is the inbox of other people's priorities. Your inbox is where you yourself drop ideas and open loops. You may feed it from email, but you decide what passes through.
What if the inbox grows to 100 items?: Sign you are not processing daily. Do a reset: whole inbox → Someday. Start at zero. Not a failure, just maintenance.
How long does processing take?: Daily — 5–15 minutes. Weekly — 30–60. If more, you are probably designing projects during processing instead of just classifying.