Tips to Make Inbox Zero Work

It’s a myth to some… a dream to others, and while certainly elusive, Inbox Zero can be achieved by mere mortals — yes even you!

Email as a system that hasn’t really evolved over the last two decades other a shift from desktop clients to web based access systems like Gmail.

But fear not! No matter the system you use to access and manage your email you can still instigate and successfully operate a sparkling clean inbox.

First I want to dispel a few common myths of zero inbox…

Myth One — It’s difficult to start inbox zero…

The most pessimistic of the myths you’ve ever heard about inbox zero.

If you believe this then you’ve already resigned to fail before you even start.

Really it’s not that hard. Pick a time when you know you get the least amount of mail throughout the day and get to work. You need to start by drawing a line in the sand, that doesn’t mean you have to complete every outstanding email you have… far from it.

Myth Two — It’s hard to keep inbox zero working…

Bzzzzzzz… Wrong.

Once you have the right setup, and the discipline to keep it up, it’s usually the other way around. Stopping will be more difficult because it means you’ll have to return to the hideous mess that was your inbox before you started.

Myth Three — I can’t start a zero inbox because of <insert your lame excuse here>…

Because why? There isn’t a single reason you can think of other than sheer laziness as to why you can’t start getting to inbox zero right now. What’s even more interesting is that once you start it’s an addictive process to finish all your emails.

Having an inbox is one thing, being able to lay your hands on a specific email, sent by a specific person on a specific date about a specific topic? That is a superpower, and it makes you look, and feel, like a productivity genius to others —and you’ll turn into one soon enough!

How to Get Started

Possibly the hardest step is to draw the line in the sand, but only because you don’t yet have the skills to stick to it.

You need to grab all those thousands of emails you’ve been hoarding in your inbox for far too long and decide what you want to do with them. Archive them? Set up folders for each year of email? Shove them in one big folder marked old? (don’t do that) DELETE THEM!?!

Okay so don’t delete them right away.
You collected all that email for a goddamn reason after all.

It’s the conversational history you have had with people and businesses over time, so if you believe you can do without the thousands of newsletters you’ve signed up for, it then sure go ahead and delete it. But if it’s an invoice, receipt or personal email you reminisce about, then perhaps you’d be best to keep it around.

So here is your chance, get to work, setup those folders and sort out that mountain of email… go on, get on with it, I can wait…

…

…several hours later…

…

Ok, you’ve cleared your inbox at this point yes? On to the next step…

Email Filter Rules

What are the things that really productive people use for their inbox?
EMAIL FILTER RULES.

First off, you might already use them and you may already know how to employ them but I’m guessing that even if you do you’ve got a bunch of them which don’t really work for you and you set them up for all the wrong reasons.

An email filter rule isn’t there to file away your email into a folders sub-folder where it will never see the light of digital day again, they are there to help automate the fiddly-bits you do in order to call it complete.

An example of this is a simple auto-categorisation of incoming emails, and basically every email app or web platform has it’s own form of filter rules.

Let’s look at a couple of examples.

Let’s say you receive a regular email with the same subject line, then you could construct a rule that says:

• If it contains in the subject the word ‘important‘
• and it is from: ‘thisemail@address.com‘
• then flag the email as ‘high importance‘
• and move into the ‘URGENT‘ folder.

Now while this is a simple rule that can triage incoming email, you can also create complex rules that could auto-respond to the incoming email, it might automatically add the person as a contact, label the email, move it into a folder and forward a copy of the email through to other people.

The limitation of filter rules really depends on your email client.

Here’s a simple system of rules that you could apply to your emails right now.

Create the two folders listed below:

• Receipts
• Invoices

So we have two folders which we will categorise incoming emails, now lets look at what the rule for ‘Receipts’ will look like:

• if it contains in the subject the word ‘receipt’
• then set the category or label to ‘receipt’
• then move into the ‘Receipts’ folder

So with the above rule you should be able to work out the rule for Invoices.

Now this of course only deals with two email possibilities, but rules that categorise and move your email into areas other than your inbox are key to an efficient zero inbox.

Self Discipline

So you’ve got a set of rules that auto-tag, categorise, label and move email from your inbox… great work, but without self discipline to process all the other email cruft you get during the day then your inbox will soon be full of all that crap you just sorted out.

So how do you gain email self discipline? Well it’s pretty simple really, here it is in a nutshell:

• If you want to keep it, ARCHIVE IT!
• If you’ll never need it, DELETE IT!

Yes, it is that easy. Most modern email systems and clients have pretty great search functions which will allow you to use multiple parameters or search terms to find relevant email.

If you already know that there’s an email in a particular category then you’ve just done 85% of the work, let the email system/client do all the heavy lifting for you rather than sitting there sifting through a thousand emails attempting to find that one important email you received three years ago.

Congratulations on your new Zero Inbox

Hooray! Well Done!…

Now sit down, shut up and listen.

While it may be a pristine desert-like void of an inbox right now, it won’t stay that way for very long, but if you’ve put the above tips in place.

One Last Tip

You know all that junky email you get, no not the spam to enlarge your genitalia or to purchase a lifetime supply of Chinese Viagra… I mean the stuff you actually signed up for.

Those special offers from deal sites, the quarterly email that comes out from that shoe company you purchased those cute high heels you’ve never worn last Christmas… the crappy sales email.

We all love to read it, especially when we have some time to kill and you’re trying to find a bargain. Think of it like reading the catalogues you get in your snail mail, it just takes up useless space and mostly you’ll never purchase anything from these companies again.

In spite of this, we all give these emails way more attention than they deserve because you might get a good deal one day. So if you’re looking for a new something-or-other search away in the minefield of your ‘Bulk’ folder.

Do yourself a favour and set up a final rule. Do it for yourself, do it for the nation, hell do it for the lack of atmosphere on the moon for all I care but do it none the less.

This rule is called ‘BULK’. Create a folder to match it, in this rule tag all of that shitty email you get and delegate it to forever live in this folder.

Let the Bulk handle it for you.

I Know You Got This

So that’s really about it, the scary and daunting task of going Inbox Zero isn’t at all that bad. You just need a little time, some considered thought, and a decent plan (like the one above!) and you too can sort out that hideous burning garbage-fire mess you call your inbox.