Inbox Zero

I have a stress relief strategy I would like to share with you. I had a time where I felt quite overwhelmed by all the tasks I had to do and of course sometimes something slipped my mind and I did not do something in time which really bothered me. Also I was constantly working with the feeling that there is something I might have forgotten. Some email I have not yet replied to that was washed away in the constant stream of new messages. So I started my version of “Inbox zero”.
You can google this and there are many different flavors and workflows, but here is the essence:

Keep your inbox clean.

My Email Workflow


It might sound crazy, but for me it works. So here is how I work with my emails:

  • Information that is not important -> delete
  • Something that should be stored for later reference -> archive it
  • Something that requires you to do something
    • simple task (calendar item, forwarding to others, etc) -> do it,
    • complicated task -> schedule a time or put on to do list (what ever your workflow is)
  • once you are done with the task -> archive the message or delete it (depending on content)
  • if it is something you have not done yet/a conversation that is still ongoing and you are waiting for an answer -> keep the message as a reminder, but keep as little messages as possible directly in your inbox and keep reviewing them to make them go to the archive as quickly as possible.

I archive everything into one gigantic archive folder. Anything more complicated makes me fail keeping my inbox clean. My workflow has to be as simple as possible and the search function mostly works fine if I really need to find that information. If it is really important information for a project, then I store that separately in a note to that project

So usually I end up with the new messages plus maybe 5 messages that I have still as reminders/ongoing conversations in my inbox. To me it feels very nice and I don’t get the impression that things are getting out of control.  What do you think?

How to Get Started

To start with I had a gigantic pile of messages in my inbox. I went through the past 2 or 3 weeks to double check and then archived the rest without touching it again.

Good Habit about Mails

Of course do not check your mails every 5 minutes and turn off the notifications This was such a boost to my productivity!

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