This month I have been focused on decluttering my inbox. I have many things to declutter in my life, but focusing on one aspect a month has been good for me to stay focused and not bounce around all over the place.
“It requires much less energy to maintain e-mail at a zero base than at a thousand base.” ~ David Allen from Getting Things Done
How is your email inbox looking these days? If you are like me, then you have a lot! Or at least I did until I made an effort to declutter.
As David advises in his book and in which it makes complete sense – it requires MUCH less energy to maintain e-mail at a zero base than at a thousand base. I never understood this until I hit
INBOX ZERO!!
A few weeks back I recorded my first steps towards #inboxzero
My first step required my Google Inbox setup with categories
This was just the start. I used(key aspect of this word is the past tense!) my inbox as a storage device. I had to take everything I was storing and do something with them all.
In this second video you can see the tools, extensions, and more to take all my emails and move to the next step.
Let me know what you think. What other tips have you used to keep your inbox minimum? So far this system has kept my inbox to a very few emails in the last week.
Part three of this series I will tackle all my folder and remove the hundreds of folders I have created. But for now, one step at a time.
Leave a comment with your hacks!
It is important to reduce your inbox. All those emails are just screaming for you attention and you then wasting thinking energy trying to process those emails, determine what to do, which emails to read, and next thing you know your stress levels are starting to rise and you have barely finished your coffee and started your day. With an inbox at zero you can start calmer, fresher, and with more thinking energy.
Let me know how you do towards #inboxzero or how I can help!
I’m happy that this works for you, but I just don’t feel the need. I receive maybe a hundred emails a day, of which 30 or so are in my Primary inbox, and I either deal with them on my Chromebook, phone (and now even my watch) or mark them to return to later. I don’t do anything else – don’t even archive them – and even though I apparently have 3000 unread messages, I have absolutely no email stress because those are all just forum or social posts I don’t care about. I don’t even label or categorise them because Search is a better way to find stuff. The investment required in developing a faultless organization system just doesn’t seem worthwhile to me. I’m aware that my approach would give a lot of people sleepless nights, but I am super-relaxed about it…
Thank you Mark for sharing your idea. I really love the simplicity of simply just searching and not worrying. I really wish my mind would operate this way. Perhaps this is why I have multiple to do lists. There is a sense of accomplishment in scratching an item off the list. Perhaps when I can actually remove all this unwanted emails and storage systems I have developed that really serve no purpose I can move to just search and find.
The beauty of your comment is that there is not a one size all fits approach to management and productivity. We all have systems that works and as we all share we can pick bits and pieces that work for us.