Glossary Inbox
Inbox
ProductivityMethodology
Definition
In GTD, the single place everything lands before it has been decided — a thought, an email, a ticket, a scrap — so that capturing costs nothing and deciding can wait
Allen's rule is that the inbox is emptied regularly by processing, not by doing: each item becomes a next action, a project, reference, someday/maybe, or trash. An inbox that is never emptied is a list of guilt.
Where things go so they can stop being carried in your head. The point is the separation: capture is fast and thoughtless, processing is deliberate, and they happen at different times.
On this site the inbox is Notes — described there as the idea capture inbox — and a seed with no tags and no home is one that has been captured and not yet processed.