I believe myself and plenty others have been facing the same problem. With the increasing rise in social networks, globalization and remote working teams, communication frequently, timely and critically is becoming an important facet in our workflow. This brings me to the topic on emails. It’s still the only professional communication tool of our choice. I’m waiting for the day people can just twttr-mail one another. I’m sure some do it already ☺

So how do we go about checking emails? I’ve read plenty of productivity blogs asking me to limit checking my email to 1-3 times a day, a host of ways to deal with the increased number of emails and how to auto-sort, group, label and filter them. Unfortunately, while the amount amount of time and (money?) I’ve spent on a host of clients hasn’t resolved this issue for me.

Enter Mailbox. It’s simple, its fast, and most importantly, it thinks differently.

While the application has been available on iOS for over a year now, it launched on android recently and I’ve been using it for a while. What does it do? It follows the publicly acclaimed zero-inbox mentality where you check your email and make sure to take actions on ALL emails. Archive, label, delete or reply and archive but do something and make sure to clear out your inbox. Just like your email, you mind feels at peace. I can consent that the zero-inbox mentality works well.

However, I’ve been having a different problem. I tend to reply (for emails under 2 mins, yes that’s a productivity tim-ferris rule too), archive (so I can keep them for reference), delete (will never need them. yes, i modified my gmail prefs so I can actually delete emails forever), or star them (for later use).

Those starred emails can include various use-cases such as:

1. Read subscription blogs
2. Todo payments on the weekend since school work is more important
3. Todo taxes on a specific date (apr 15th, yes i like leaving everything for the last minute)
4. Todo file some long form paperwork that needs to be done through my mac
5. Todo give feedback of my friends resume which also I prefer to sit down and do on my mac
6. Watch this eBay item till next week to make sure I got the payment in my bank for this account

Ok. I’m cheating here. I tagged Read, Todo (analogous to Later) and Watch which are primary or sub-primary lists in Mailbox. I just didn’t know I subconsciously do it already.

You need it but you just don’t know it yet.

So here’s what their work-flow looks like so far: Lists, Later, Inbox, Archive, Delete.