My wife has over 17,000 unread messages in her personal email inbox. It’s all pretty much ads, come of them years old. It makes me a little anxious every time I catch a glimpse of her phone and that amazingly high number highlighted in red. But she’s comfortable with it and I limit myself to an occasional, “I could help you with that.” She declines my help.
I, on the other hand, maintain a zero’d out inbox as a way to achieve inner calm.
It’s not really that hard. And I find it to be very effective in keeping my anxiety levels down, especially those fears that I may be missing something.
Here’s my simple technique to keep my inbox empty.
- I commit that no read message can remain in my inbox.
- I unsubscribe from as many promotional emails as I can and immediately delete the others as I read them. It’s easier to keep your inbox empty if you receive less email.
- I keep an email folder called “Action” where I dump things that don’t have a clear category, and I try and review this box early each day. Keeping it empty is a nicety, but not a personal requirement.
- Everything else goes in the archive or in project specific folders.
That’s it. Nice and simple. When new things hit my inbox I read them and either reply, act on it in some way, put it in the Action box for later attention (or better yet, some project-related Action box for more specific tasks), or I delete it.
Boom. Inbox zero.
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