Mission: Inbox Zero
The task should you accept it: getting your email inbox organised.
Inbox Zero. It’s a think of beauty!
I’ve long been an advocate for an empty inbox. Not only does it mean you’ll never miss an email again, it’s a great way to gauge how busy you really are, and when you should call it quits for the day and close the laptop. Here’s our guide to cleaning up your inbox and setting up a foolproof routine to get you to Inbox Zero every day.
Dealing with incoming email:
Every email you receive should be dealt with by doing one of the following things when you first see it:
- Archive: I do this as soon as I’ve read an email that I don't need to reply to. The information has been absorbed, and it can be filed away. Many people don’t understand that archiving simply removes the email from your Inbox. It’s still there, sitting under the ‘All Mail’ section, available to be searched and viewed at a moments notice.
- Deal with it there and then: If you can reply quickly, do it. These types of emails should be one liners. Don’t spend any more than 3 minutes composing it. Once you’ve replied, archive it. Gmail allows you to ‘Send and Archive’, which saves an extra click. You can find this feature in settings.
- Delegate it: Forward the email onto the person best placed to deal with it. Same rules apply here - don’t spend more than 3 minutes composing the email. Send and Archive.
- Deal with it later: If it’s an email that will take some thinking, or some work, snooze it to a time when you will have time to deal with it, or when you need to be reminded about doing it. Receive a personal email during work hours? Snooze it til 6pm. Same goes for work emails on the weekend. If they don’t need a response til Monday, snooze it.
Gmail’s Snooze option.
- Assign it to a task: This is a new feature in Gmail that archives the email and creates it as a Google Task, with a hot-link back to the email itself. Great if you already use Tasks.
Clearing your inbox:
But first, you need to clear your (probably cluttered) inbox. To do this:
- Go through your first 1-2 pages of emails and apply one of the actions above to each recent email. Anything older than a week or two will likely have already been dealt with, so it’s safe to assume you could archive it.
- Once you get back far enough, you need to archive everything else. Remember, this doesn't delete anything, it just gets it out of your inbox. You can always search for anything you have archived (and I regularly do). All your emails are still in 'All Mail'.
All emails in your Gmail inbox can be found in All Mail.
- Hit the select all check box at the top of your inbox, and then hit archive.
Gmail’s filing and archiving options.
- Done! Now deal with every new email using one of the above options, and stay on top of it!
It takes a few weeks to form the habit, but once you do, you'll never 'miss' an email ever again.