Below The Fold

How a publishing concept can help you get organized

In publishing, whether in print on a newspaper or digitally with blogs and web sites, a key concept is “Above The Fold”. Boiled down, what this means is – put the important information, the stuff you want to grab your readers’ attention, directly in their line of sight.

You see, “Below The Fold” refers to the area of the page that requires some work to see – unfolding the paper or scrolling down the page.

I took the Below the Fold concept and applied it to my inbox. Let me tell you how this helped …

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Too much input

I’ve been struggling with time constraints as this summer has progressed. I’ve gone from a modest amount of business to a great abundance – which has pressed my time on all fronts. (and no, my personal life hasn’t slowed down any either)

One area feeling the crunch is the time I have free to read the e-zines I subscribe to. They’ve been going unread and just cluttering up my inbox, making it difficult to sort out the more important correspondence.

But even if I’m too busy today, I don’t want to stop getting the stuff, I just don’t want it piling up right in front of me;-)

A few weeks ago I altered the settings on the e-zines I was receiving – I continue to label them, but filtered them out of my in-box into their own folder.

So I’ve left just a couple that spill into my in-box – ones that publish on an infrequent basis and give me good ideas. (hmmm – hopefully that’s how you feel about http://timelyinsights.net …)

Getting under the fold

I can’t bear to see the bold “you have unread messages in this folder”. It may seem like a little thing to some people, but it’s a distraction for me.

Through a combination of circumstances, that folder label sits below the fold of my standard gmail screen – to see it, I have to scroll down the window. Now that it’s not in my direct view, I don’t feel compelled to read all the messages and clear it out…

457 unread messages

So during the last half of June and July I’ve stacked up 457 unread messages / e-zines / offers / links to webcasts, and the like…

Whew – that’s like a solid week of my time that I “saved”!

That’s time I needed to spend on direct business efforts, and I’m glad I made the switch.

I just hope I didn’t miss anything useful…-)