#tips Reaching Inbox Zero in Gmail
We all strive to reach a clean, organized inbox that stays that way. In this quick guide, I will show you how to implement it in less than 15 minutes. This method is inspired by a blog post I read some time ago along with some adaptations.
This is a method used by most of the Tiller team today and has proven efficient and easy to implement. And it’s all directly on Gmail without any extra plugins or extensions ✌️
The main idea
This is a simple process but also a commitment to keep a rigor in your daily process. It works in a simple way:
- Your general inbox (in which all your new emails arrive) will be on top
- All other inboxes will have a name and tag (“Urgent”, “To read”, etc.) and will appear bellow
- The yellow star icon you can press to mark an email as important is not alone. You can add many other shapes and colors to represent the other inboxes. They are called “special stars”
Basically, the process is simple. Every time you get a new email in your inbox, you must:
- Reply to the ones you can right away. For those you want to keep track of as “Awaiting Reply” or “Delegated,” mark with the appropriate star. Then, archive them.
- Label the emails you need to deal with later by marking them with the appropriate special star. Then, archive them.
- For the ones that you don’t need to deal with or aren’t current, either archive them without special stars or delete them entirely.
In one word, you archive everything. This helps your inbox stay at zero and everything else is either in its designated inbox, archived, or deleted.
A step by step guide
Step 1: Prepare for your new inbox layout.
At first, you’ll need to get rid of the Social and Promotions tabs.
In “Settings,” go to the “Inbox” tab and do the following:
- Change the Inbox Type to “Multiple inboxes.”
- Click Save (you always need to manually save on Gmail)
Step 2: Make the display density of your inbox compact.
Click “Display density” and choose “Compact” from the dropdown menu on the top right corner.
Step 4: Turn on the right special stars.
In “Settings,” go to the “General” tab and scroll down until you see the section labeled “Stars.” Add the stars you want to use to represent each of your inboxes and save.
For example, I use:
- Red bang: for “Needs action URGENT 🔥” for items that are urgent. It means they require an answer the same day
- Yellow bang: for “Needs action 🚀” for items that require an answer in the week
- Orange bank: for “Needs action later 😴” for items that don’t require an answer right now
- Purple question mark: for “To follow up 📬” (so I can follow up if needed, especially if I’m waiting for an action from someone in the email loop)
Step 5: Set up filters to pull emails with your special stars into the right panes.
In “Settings,” go to the “Inbox” tab and select “Multiple Inboxes”. Each pane represents one of your multiple inboxes (up to 5), and you can name and arrange them any way you choose. I’d recommend using emojis to make it more lively 🤓
Here’s what I did, as an example:
Here are the following queries you can add. You can find the detail here: https://gmail.googleblog.com/2011/08/tuesday-tip-stars.html
has:yellow-star
has:red-star
has:orange-star
has:green-star
has:blue-star
has:purple-star
has:red-bang
has:orange-guillemet
has:yellow-bang
has:green-check
has:blue-info
has:purple-question
While you’re still in the “Inbox” tab, make the maximum page size whatever you’d like (I do 40 conversations per page), and position panels below the inbox. This allows you to have a better visibility of your main mage.
Click “Save Changes,” and you’ll be taken back to your inbox.
Step 6: to the fun part
Now that your inbox is well configured, you are ready to clean it 🤔
Go through the first two or three pages of your inbox.
Go through the 2/3 first pages of your inbox and do one of three things with each email:
- Mark it with a special star if you need to keep it (and do something with it!).
- Delete it.
- Do nothing and be ready to archive it.
Once it’s done, you’re ready for the fun part. Select all your emails (click on the box just under the search bar), take a deep breath, select all pages, and then click on archive
PS: don’t worry. Your emails are not deleted. You can always find them all in the section “All Mail” or by searching them directly.
Some extra tips
- Activate the “Send and archive” option: as we said, it is important to archive (or delete) everything. This allows you to directly archive an email when it’s sent.
Go to “General” in the Settings and down to the “Send and Archive” section.
2. Bring undo send time up to 30 seconds. We’ve all been there, you click on send on an email that’s not ready or you realize after sending it that it’s not addressed to the right person. 😱
With this mode activated, you have up to 30 seconds to delete the email you just send, before it reaches your recipient.
