Inbox Zero: An Overview

So I kind of have an addiction to productivity systems. It’s a habit that comes with its own dangers, but I’m mindful that the pursuit of being productive can cause me to waste prodigious amounts of time [weird, isn't it?]. So I try to limit my visits to blogs like 43Folders, where GTD is gospel.

That said, I recently took it upon myself to achieve Inbox Zero, a state of communication zen achieved by treating all your email inbox items like items in your GTD inbox—you do them, delegate them, defer them, or delete them. That’s all there is.

And I did it. In a matter of one afternoon, I did it. And I’ve maintained it ever since then. And it’s been amazing.

I don’t really want to repeat every single thing that Merlin, the editor of 43Folders and the creator of the Inbox Zero system, says in his blog posts about it—you should really read his treatise on the subject. But seriously, guys? This has had a pretty profound effect on the way that I do things with my email. So I’m going to share.

• If you don’t already have one, get a Gmail account. I’ve had mine since 2004, and it’s gotten progressively better since then [then again, I haven't used anything but that since then, so I have no basis for comparison]. If you use Gmail, you might be okay, but if you don’t have a system with really good archiving capabilities, you probably cannot succeed at Inbox Zero.
• Let go of the really, really old things. The oldest things in my inbox when I started were emails from an old boyfriend, tiny remnants of old jobs, and ticket receipts from events I attended in the summer of 2004. The key word was “old.” There were no action items associated with these emails, so I deleted most and archived the boyfriend stuff [Hey—shut up. We're friends now]. It felt good, so I kept going. In particular, I remember going through a ton of old messages from Facebook—”You have been poked by Ian!” “Molly’s 21st Birthday sent you a message!” “Katherine would like you to join the Anti-FormZ Consortium!” I have no idea why I didn’t archive or delete this stuff in the first place.
• You don’t owe anyone a lengthy reply.

I had emails from a handful of people that I kept around in my inbox thinking I’d get around to writing a proper reply back one day, when a simple “Thanks!” would have sufficed. In particular, I’d been holding onto a several-paragraph email from an old friend that I was kind of miffed at, merely because I didn’t know what to say to her. I ended up biting my tongue and writing a brief catch-up email, less than five sentences. [Isn't that what Tim Ferriss tells you to do?]

• In fact, you don’t owe anyone a reply at all. Period. Ask yourself: “Does this email require action?” Put extra stress on the word “require.” If not, get rid of it. End of story.
• This might not be an issue that Inbox Zero addresses, but I’ve found that it’s a useful tip for maintaining it: Do whatever you can to stop the flow of junk into your inbox. This means unsubscribing from those DailyCandy-esque newsletters that you subscribed to hopefully but never really read. If you can’t unsubscribe, Gmail has a super-useful filtering system—you can tell it to delete certain types of messages the moment you receive them [what I ended up doing for two such mailing lists whose "unsubscribe" options were tactically hidden], or to just skip the inbox and send them to the archive [what I've been doing with Facebook for months].
• Tagging systems are helpful, but searching email is too. I think what allowed me to click “Select All” and then “Archive” was knowing that once a message was archived, I’d always be able to access it via search. If I want to see the email that Robert sent me back in October that quoted Jeremy Jay, all I have to do is search my archives for the phrase “Jeremy Jay.” Tagging that message as “Robert” or “Lyrics” or “Love Letters” would have been helpful, but in my opinion it wasn’t necessary for me, because the search function solved the same problem that a tag would have.
• Get back to Inbox Zero every day. It’s much, much easier to maintain Inbox Zero than to achieve it for the first time. Once you get there, opening your inbox isn’t so much of a chore, and once you allow yourself the freedom not to have to read every damn word that passes your spam filter, you free up so much time and energy. It’s really inexplicable how good it feels to see an empty inbox and know that I have absolutely nothing email-related to do.

Have any of you ever done this? Do you have a method by which you deal with your email? Is your inbox overflowing?

Related posts:

1. Getting Things Done: A Summary and My Favorite Hacks
2. 10 Things to Do for an Instant Increase in Quality of Life