The Zen of the Zero Inbox

My email account has always been a pseudo to-do list that I actively attempted to work through. Last year I was turned to the idea of striving to achieve the zero inbox due to a tweet by Tim Walker exclaiming his current zero inbox mastery.  Over the year I would occasionally hit the zero inbox in an individual account, but today I finally hit it in all my active email accounts, a true zen moment knowing that I have absolutely zero emails awaiting.

I have a handful of accounts, but pictured below are my two main accounts.

My empty personal email account. =)

My empty work account. =)

How To Achieve the Zero Inbox

There are a handful of strategies and techniques that can be implemented, but the following worked the best for me.

  1. Organize Emails by Type – Tim Walker writes a great post titled Inbox-Fu: The Mystery of Resadoth.  Essentially you need separate your emails by type.  Tim suggests folders, whereas I left them all in the inbox but would address each type in the appropriate order.  Essentially you want to separate into “Read”, “Say”, “Do” and “Think” which Tim suggests addressing in reverse order.  I noticed that in each email session I would address all 4 of the email types, always finishing by with a couple of the “read” emails.
  2. You Don’t Have to Answer – Just because you get an email, doesn’t mean you have to respond.  If the email lacks a question or any reason to respond (besides a nicety), archive it.
  3. Be Succinct – Get to the point of the email briefly. It is easier for you to write and easier for your reader to respond.
  4. Set A Goal – Set a goal of how many emails to accomplish in a day and stick to it. If the goal is 20, complete ALL 20.
  5. Focus On One Task – Emails can be a time suck. Decide how long you want to work on the inbox, and focus solely on that task.  When done, close down your email and work on another project.
  6. Emails Don’t Age Nicely – Unlike wine, emails don’t get better with time.  If you haven’t responded to an email for 6+ months, it obviously isn’t important. Archive it.
  7. Utilize Your Mobile Phone – Have a couple minutes on the train?  Waiting for someone to show for an appointment?  Hurry and knock out a couple emails on your blackberry or mobile device.  Make those spare minutes valuable.

Tim has written a handful of excellent posts on what he calls Inbox-Fu.

What about you readers? What techniques work for you?

This entry was written by WasatchGirl, posted on May 23, 2009 at 12:14 pm, filed under business and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback.

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