I wrote the original article almost 6 years ago. This deserves a small update. Most of what's in the original article remains true. I'll only add/update some parts below.

Work TODO list

This has not changed much. Except that nowadays, I keep my TODO list in Asana instead of a simple text file, because it's backed up on a server and the UI is slightly nicer.

I still have my items sorted by priority, from most pressing to least. I've stopped using the 3 groups I used to use (to do today, this month, some day...). I just keep "one list". For coding tasks that I want to do "some day", I simply create JIRA tickets and add them to the backlog.

Personal TODO list

That one has quite changed over the years. What I've been doing lately is fairly simple:

• On Sunday evenings, I plan the week to come and write my plan down on paper, usually assigning days to tasks. But only things I want to do that are not work-related nor sport-related. All my sport sessions are scheduled in my Google Calendar, on a fixed time slot, set to be recurring. I also leverage lunch breaks as much as possible when I'm working from home for my runs. So what goes in my weekly schedule? Things to book or buy, blog articles to write, repairs in the apartment to do, etc.
• Anything beyond the one week to come is added to my Google Calendar. So that I can "forget about these" until they show up in my Google Calendar again. When that happens, I'll put them on my TODO list for the week to come, on paper.

By doing this, I keep a fairly short TODO list, that I know will be completed by the end of the week. Having too many items in my list was too stressful, and I would be too undisciplined about it. The less items, the higher the completion rate.

Also, I can plan things ahead in the future, then let time pass, and decide a few months later if I still want/need to do these things. Very useful.

Inbox and Thunderbird

I'll just rewrite this whole section entirely, as there are some minor updates since the original article came out, but it still is a major piece of the way I work.

Any email usually fall in one of these three categories:

• Action required on your side: it could be a quick action (like replying) or a time-consuming one (like filling a form out).
• Temporary/momentary information: a piece of information valid for a short amount of time, or useful for a short amount of time, that can be discarded afterwards. Like being informed that somebody is leaving the company, hearing about an event being scheduled, etc.
• Important information that must be kept for a long time, or files: for instance, a new process to book business trips that you need to remember, or an amendment to a work contract.

An email inbox works essentially just like a physical mailbox. Mail people get in their mailboxes also fall into these categories: bills are actions required on your side, postcards bring news only valid temporarily, payrolls are important information, parcels are like files, etc.

Nobody would open a mailbox, see what's inside, and leave it there. Therefore, it does not make any sense to have inboxes full of emails. Leave alone unread emails.

That's why I am doing Inbox Zero: I aim (and almost always succeed) at keeping my inbox empty. My strategy is as follows:

• I open my email client a few times a day, usually at the beginning of the day, before lunch, after lunch, a few times in the afternoon when I'm on code-breaks, and before leaving work.

• I process emails one by one:

• If it's an "action required" email and the action takes less than 5 minutes, I do it immediately then delete the email.

• If it's an "action required" email and the action takes more than 5 minutes, I keep the email in my inbox and add a new entry in my TODO list such as "reply to email from X" or "do what X asked for". I will then delete the email when the action is done.
• If it's temporary information, I try to memorize it or I take note of it if needed and delete the email immediately. A temporary information could be a Google Calendar invite, a JIRA edit from my colleagues, an incident reported by New Relic, etc.
• If it's an important piece of information or a file, I move the email into the appropriate subfolder (they're called labels in Gmail). Examples are a contract (PDF document), an organizational change, a POST-MORTEM document that I believe will be useful in the future, a train ticket that will eventually be deleted when the trip is done, etc. For some attachments, I will save the file on my computer/in the cloud and delete the email right away.

As I just said, I use Gmail labels quite a lot, in the sense that many emails end up labeled, and leave my inbox immediately. However, I only have a handful of them, to keep things simple. Here are a few:

• Upcoming: train tickets, hotel reservation, etc. Short-lived emails, usually with attached documents.
• Archives: anything that must be stored on the long term, that do not necessarily contain any attachment.

I also rely on Gmail filters extensively. I get a lot of emails I don't need to see at all, that I want deleted automatically. For instance, I often check the notifications on Github, therefore I don't need to also see the emails they send me. These get marked as read and trashed immediately through filters.

Finally, I must confess I use Thundebird, and not the Gmail website. And I'm proud of it. The reasons I use Thunderbird are listed below:

• It works offline: I can access my emails when not connected to the Internet. Even though it happens very rarely, it's very handy when in the train for instance.
• Gmail is a website, and not a lightweight one. The tab consumes RAM memory, and opening/closing/opening it several times a day is not a better alternative, as it takes many seconds. Also I try to keep my number of opened tabs at any given time to a minimum.
• Gmail's UI is distracting, with many buttons here and there.
• I don't like the conversation-grouping feature of Gmail, I never got used to it. I think it can be disabled though. Thunderbird also has it but I disabled it.
• Thunderbird is simple, RAM-efficient. And having a distinct program for emails help see it as something important, it's not just another tab.

Slack

COVID changed things a lot. What I wrote back in 2019 does not stand anymore, I use Slack a lot now. More than I like to admit. More than emails. Constantly. And more than I'd like to. But this is what hybrid work takes.

Open spaces, headphone and sound

What I wrote back then still holds true, although I do not use headphones as much as I used to. I guess I can stand sound and noise more easily now. Also I am not in the office 5 days a week anymore...

Standing up while working

I'm still a big fan of standing desk. I even motorized the one I have at home.

Sports

In 2019, I was still occasionally smoking, and barely doing any sport, beside the one or two sessions per week at the gym. Things have changed SO MUCH since then. I now do every week 10+ hours of sport. My blog is full of articles about sports, so I won't expant on it here. But sports did change my life in many many ways, all of them positive.

Conclusion

Quite some changes since 2019, but some things remain. I guess we humans never stop experimenting, always seeking better ways to be more efficient. Moving away from Paris most definitely did play a major role in reducing stress levels for me, as well as commuting by bike and doing more sports in general.