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30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

waxman.me

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Re: 30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

#41

Post by enobrev »

jedahan wrote: post #21

I get around 50 emails a day, and hover around inbox 40 Removing all filters and categorization has helped me reach this number, and forced a few habits and mindset changes: 1: I aggressively unsubscribe from mailing lists. If you have to make a filter to automatically archive a mailing list because you never read it but want to keep it just unsubscribe. If you have to, bookmark the site but if you aren't reading it…

I have a very similar system, and for the first time in well over a decade, my total inbox (spanning 3 gmail accounts) has hovered somewhere around 10-15 messages for the past 2 months.

Two questions decide the fate of every email "Is this from a person I know?" and "Will I ever need to search for this?" If both are no, then it's destroyed with reckless abandon. All others are archived immediately. No "read" messages in my inbox, ever. It's either "unread" or it's archived.

I almost always Send + Archive, unless what I sent was "I'll take a look in a couple minutes". And then I Send + Archive as soon as I send the next reply. If it sits in my inbox for over a couple days, I add it to Asana (if I haven't already) and archive the message.

I unsubscribe to almost everything automated (besides my own daily system summaries, which I delete once I've reviewed them).

One thing I would _love_ to have is the ability to set expiration filters on my emails. For instance, I like getting travel deals in my inbox, but I never need them for more than a day (since they generally only last that long anyways). Same for system summaries: Auto-Delete or Auto-Archive after 3 days would be perfect.

Also, since I don't use a local client for email, the "Checker Plus for Gmail" Chrome extension is pretty great, since it shows everything as a unified inbox, and shows me a single "unread" number so I know when I need to dive in and do some triage.

Re: 30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

#42

Post by pbiggar »

wvenable wrote: post #6

I'm doing the exact opposite as Michael; but I can't say which of us has the better system. I probably get a lot fewer emails. I've given up on inbox zero -- I now use inbox infinity. Everything stays my inbox unless auto-categorized (mailing lists, specific clients, etc). When I look through my emails, I flag any email I'm not dealing with right now. Otherwise I reply, leave it, or delete it. I archive anything old…

In many roles, that would be irresponsible, as you would drop your colleagues emails and leave them hanging. I agree it would be freeing, but I don't think its fair to the rest of the team.

Re: 30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

#43

Post by pbiggar »

Beliavsky wrote: post #3

I wonder if Inbox Zero is a worthwhile goal. My inbox is effectively one of my to-do lists. Since I don't cross off everything on my to-do list each day, my inbox usually has a few dozen messages. I have found that when I move an email to a "check later" folder, I never do so.

You need to get into the habit of checking your TODO. I find it quite easy to get into that habit with Andreas Klinger's system, but I haven't been able to with any other system I tried. I think it's because I see them on the right.

Re: 30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

#45

Post by wvenable »

mmatants wrote: post #36
wvenable wrote: post #6

I'm doing the exact opposite as Michael; but I can't say which of us has the better system. I probably get a lot fewer emails. I've given up on inbox zero -- I now use inbox infinity. Everything stays my inbox unless auto-categorized (mailing lists, specific clients, etc). When I look through my emails, I flag any email I'm not dealing with right now. Otherwise I reply, leave it, or delete it. I archive anything old…

An email in your inbox is two things: an imperative to act (reply, call, do something based on the email), and a piece of searchable supporting information for that action - or anything else, really. So what you describe is pretty close already to inbox zero. The last step is to get even more aggressive about archiving things non-to-dos and trusting that archive search box. A truly empty inbox is more important than…

My inbox is not an imperative to act -- only the unread bold items are such an imperative. Those are to be replied, forwarded, flagged, deleted, or ignored. If it's read then I've done one of those actions. No need to archive off the inbox to get that discipline. All the tools are there.

I found that it's a disadvantage to not have the stream of activity that Inbox infinity provides. All incoming email is sorted by date so I can always see my activity.

Re: 30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

#46

Post by wvenable »

pbiggar wrote: post #42
wvenable wrote: post #6

I'm doing the exact opposite as Michael; but I can't say which of us has the better system. I probably get a lot fewer emails. I've given up on inbox zero -- I now use inbox infinity. Everything stays my inbox unless auto-categorized (mailing lists, specific clients, etc). When I look through my emails, I flag any email I'm not dealing with right now. Otherwise I reply, leave it, or delete it. I archive anything old…

In many roles, that would be irresponsible, as you would drop your colleagues emails and leave them hanging. I agree it would be freeing, but I don't think its fair to the rest of the team.

I don't understand what you mean? Why would any emails get dropped? All unread emails when read are replied-to, forwarded, flagged, deleted, or ignored.

Re: 30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

#47

Post by jpwgarrison »

dingaling wrote: post #38
rwallace wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get five hundred e-mails per day and many of them need replies on a timescale shorter than a few hours, presumably replying to e-mail is (a large part of how you do) your job. Which is fine; that means if you spend a few hours a day replying to e-mail, you're spending a few hours a day doing your job, which is as it should be. Articles like this one are addressed to people for whom e-mail is a distraction from…

> that means if you spend a few hours a day replying to e-mail, you're spending a few hours a day doing your job Sadly not. In the corporate world, if an activity doesn't have a timesheet task code associated, it doesn't exist. Clearing e-mails doesn't have a task code, so effeectively it's a few hours unbillable on top of your working hours each day.

Super happy to be in the middle ground here. Post startup, pre-IPO. We track our time, but putting an hour or three as "phone/email" into toggl.com is normal.

Re: 30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

#48

Post by read »

enobrev wrote: post #41
jedahan wrote: post #21

I get around 50 emails a day, and hover around inbox 40 Removing all filters and categorization has helped me reach this number, and forced a few habits and mindset changes: 1: I aggressively unsubscribe from mailing lists. If you have to make a filter to automatically archive a mailing list because you never read it but want to keep it just unsubscribe. If you have to, bookmark the site but if you aren't reading it…

I have a very similar system, and for the first time in well over a decade, my total inbox (spanning 3 gmail accounts) has hovered somewhere around 10-15 messages for the past 2 months. Two questions decide the fate of every email "Is this from a person I know?" and "Will I ever need to search for this?" If both are no, then it's destroyed with reckless abandon. All others are archived immediately. No "read" messages…

Why do you want to know if an email is from a person you know?

Re: 30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

#49

Post by weland »

slgeorge wrote: post #30
weland wrote: post #24

Can, uh, can someone please explain me how exactly you end up with a hundred mails in inbox? Every day? This is a genuine question, please bear with me. I follow several high-traffic mailing lists, and I use e-mail as my primary means of Internet communication, because I started using it back when ICQ wasn't all the rage yet. But they're all tidied up and filtered. Checking my e-mail in the morning takes, what, five…

I think it's a very "role specific" problem. You sound like you're in a really lucky situation where neither your specific job, not your organisation has a big email culture. But, for a lot of roles or organisations they use email for distributed tasking. Even in a reasonably small technical team I'd say this is common - so you start receiving email that requires response due to it either being a task or it checking…

Thanks! Yeah, it does make some sense.

Re: 30 Days of Inbox Zero: How I Did it

#50

Post by andyhmltn »

One great way I have found is to filter all emails with 'unsubscribe' into a separate folder for reading later using this:

`Matches: ("opt-out" OR unsubscribe OR "viewing the newsletter" OR "privacy policy" OR enews OR "edit your preferences" OR "email notifications" OR "update profile" OR smartunsubscribe OR secureunsubscribe OR yahoogroups OR "manage your account" OR "group-digests")`

It really helps cut down unproductive emails

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