Skillful information management requires continuous vigilance and effort. If you’re an active participant in today’s world, stuff is constantly coming in. If you don’t develop practices to keep information organized, you will soon find yourself hobbled.

I’m reminded of a powerful image from one of my favorite books, Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s The Little Prince. You’ve probably read it, but here’s a quick synopsis in case you haven’t: The book’s narrator, an aviator, crash-lands in the Sahara. Alone and running out of provisions, he desperately tries to repair his aircraft. A mysterious child appears. He keeps the aviator company, sometimes annoying him with naive/profound requests.

In the course of their conversation, the aviator realizes that the child — the titular little prince — has come from another planet. It’s a small planet, but it keeps him constantly busy:

“It’s a question of discipline,” the little prince told me later on. “When you’re finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet. You must be sure you pull up the baobabs regularly, as soon as you can tell them apart from the rosebushes, which they closely resemble when they’re very young. It’s very tedious work, but very easy.”

Why baobabs? The little prince goes on to explain:

“Sometimes there’s no harm in postponing your work until later. But with baobabs, it’s always a catastrophe. I knew one planet that was inhabited by a lazy man. He had neglected three bushes…”

I think of this story every morning as I work through my email inbox. There are two types of people in the world: those who let email pile up in their inbox, and those who adhere to the “inbox zero” approach. I’m in the latter camp. There’s no middle ground.

Once a day, I “tend my planet” by going through every message in my inbox. Some get archived or deleted. Some I skim and save for later reference. Some I must act on immediately. I note the rest in my to-do application for future action.

Among other things, I’m looking out for baobabs. Most emails are one-time engagements. But some hint at bigger projects. These require special care​ because there’s only so much time available for such things. Too many of thes​e and things spiral out of control.

In some ways,​ we have it harder than the little prince. Most of us have more than one inbox to tend. I deal with email, Slack, a physical inbox, two physical mailboxes, Facebook messages, LinkedIn messages, Twitter messages, and more. All require constant attention.

I know people with thousands (in some cases, tens of thousands) of emails in their inbox. I shudder when I look at their phones or computers. I wonder, how many baobab seeds are lurking in there? One or two baobabs aren’t bad. In fact, they’re what keep the machinery running. The problem is when you have too many. Sorting them out calls for constant, proactive vigilance.

You can take a vacation once in a while; get a break from the onslaught of information. But watch out! When you come back you must attend to the backlog. Diligence is the price for effectiveness and peace of mind. The alternative is always a catastrophe.

I’ve never liked the phrase “work-life balance.” It’s a bad distinction: work is a part of life, and being alive is a prerequisite to getting work done. To think of the two as separate is to impoverish both, so I’m inclined to blur the lines. This is easier to do today than ever before. Many people see this as a negative, but not me.

By “work,” I mean creating value for others in exchange for some remuneration. There’s no reason why this should be constrained to a particular time or place. We’ve inherited our current work patterns from a previous era when work required expensive, fixed infrastructure. (Think industrial factories.) People agreed to be at this infrastructure at particular times of day, in shifts. This maximized efficiency for industrial work.

But this is not necessarily efficient for information work. If a client emails me to ask a question, a faster reply is often more valuable than one that takes longer. Using my little glass rectangle, I can get back to them from anywhere. I’ve generated lots of value while sitting in public transport, waiting for the teller at the bank, after finishing lunch, etc. These impromptu dips into “work” aren’t an intrusion into “life” — I see both as a continuous stream.

Independent consulting gives me great control over when and where I work. When I don’t have meetings, I like to work from my local public library, which is always quiet and pleasant. Or maybe I’ll walk to a coffee shop for a cup of tea. Whatever the case, changing my physical environment helps me get things done. I cordon off particular activities to one place or the other; the change of venue is a palette cleanser that allows me to shift my focus from one task to another.

This way of working is very effective for me. There were times in my career when I forced myself to sit at the same desk for eight-hour work days. Even though I was “working” more, I was much less productive. Tethering myself to the same place and forcing myself to produce “on command” was often a recipe for frustration. That’s not how the mind works — at least not mine. I need to shift modes, change the zoom on the lens, get my body moving.

I can engage more fluidly because my work doesn’t happen in physical environments; it happens in information environments. With small, powerful electronic devices, I can access those information environments from anywhere. This calls for discipline — the work needs to be done, after all — and organization. But the payoff is a release from the tension many of us feel between “work” and “life.” A well-ordered information ecosystem can simultaneously make us more effective and more engaged with the world beyond our desks.

I was an early user of Gmail. I don’t remember exactly when I signed up for the service, but I do know I was using it by September of 2005. It became my primary mail system in a relatively short span of time. There were four features that drew me into Gmail:

• Its amazing anti-spam filters. Hooboy has this saved my sanity!
• Its lightweight web-based UI.
• Its large (for the time) storage allocations.
• Its search functionality, which is (still) one of the best I’ve experienced in any system.

It’s the last two of these features that I want to delve into here.

Gmail isn’t just an email system; it’s a digital memory of my life. Shortly after I started using it, I imported the previous four years of mail into my account. As a result, I have a searchable email archive of the last eighteen years or so. This is an incredibly powerful thing to have at your disposal.

Email isn’t just about communicating with other people: We also receive confirmations for doctors appointments, bank statements, flight boarding passes, contracts, etc. Over time, these things add up to an important repository of information about your life. Something that may seem trivial now can be quite important in the future. Because you have so much space in Gmail, you don’t have to throw it out. And because Gmail’s search is so good, you don’t have to worry about categorizing it upfront.

Last night I was making a list of trips I’ve been on over the past few years. Compiling this list was relatively easy using Gmails advanced search: I used the before and after operators to define time windows​ and included the three-letter​ airport codes where I frequently fly from (SFO and OAK.) I completed what could’ve been a long, tedious task in a matter of minutes.

I particularly feel the power of my digital memory in its converse. Once I was trying to recall the exact date of an event that occurred prior to 2001. This proved surprisingly challenging. I’ve been paperless for the past decade or so (meaning I scan every important paper-based document that comes my way,) but I have few documents in my system from before this time. For stuff between 2001-2008, I can fall back on my Gmail archive. But I have scant information in my system before 2001. Searches return nothing. I looked for a long time among old paper-based archives for the date I needed, only to come up empty-handed.

Some people are very disciplined about keeping archives. I’ve gotten more so over the years, but have little to show for earlier parts of my life. For stuff in between, I can rely on Gmail as a digital memory; it seldom lets me down.