Inbox Zero — Day 1. Getting off to a good start
Email overload
There used to be a time when people were actually excited when they heard the beep that announced a new incoming email. Looking at my inbox, it is hard to imagine that this was once a reality. Of course, a lot has changed since then. Email traffic has gone through the roof with more than 200 billion emails being send every single day.
What is Inbox Zero?
There are a lot of interpretations floating around of what Inbox Zero means. Often people are referring to Inbox Zero as the act of getting your email inbox to zero messages. This is not what Inbox Zero is about. Not at all. Fanatically trying to keep an empty inbox is not a goal on itself. Once you reach an empty inbox, a minute later this gets undone by the next incoming email and the race to Inbox Zero restarts.
Inbox Zero is about spending your time on emails more efficiently, about making sure that you focus on the important things and filter out the noise, about having to look at things only when you have to, about setting your own schedule instead of letting it being dictated by incoming emails. It’s about peace of mind.
This article is the first one in a series of 5 articles that give you a number of tips & tricks on how to manage your emails in a more efficient way. Following these suggestions helps you overcome email overload and achieve Inbox Zero.
Get off to a good start
When you’re trying to get a better grip on your emails, it is important to get off to a good start. It is not unthinkable that you have a lot of emails just sitting in your inbox at the moment. The very first step is to archive all old emails from your inbox so that you’re starting with clean sheet.
Move all emails older than 20 days to your Archive folder. If you happen to have unread emails in your inbox, don’t bother reading them. Don’t waste your time deciding whether these should be archived yes or no. Studies have shown that emails older than 20 days don’t make any difference. Whether you reply to an email after 20 days or 6 months later, the repercussions are negligible. If it is important enough, the sender will send you a reminder.
Remember that you’re only archiving your emails, you’re not deleting them. So you don’t have to worry that you’ll be losing anything. In the event that you need to fetch an old email, you can still easily retrieve it using the search functionality of your email client.
Takeaways
While archiving your old emails might seem like a small step, it lays the foundation for managing your inbox more efficiently.
What’s next?
In our next article, we’re discussing how to process your incoming emails.
