Inbox 0 is Easier Than You Think — You Just Did Not Use the Right Tools
A short guide to the two Gmail features that make inbox 0 possible for everyone.
I have been part of the inbox-0-club for well over 3 years now. The idea is simple: Have 0 emails in your inbox. I make sure to get there twice a week.
Achieving inbox 0 is easy, motivating and time-saving — if you use the right tools. If you are not there yet, you did not use all features correctly.
When I first used emails I used an elaborate folder structure. A year later, I realized that I wasn’t going through folders to find emails. I only searched. So I merged my folders and called the resulting one “processed”. All email that I was ‘done’ with was moved there. Now I had inbox, trash and processed. Then came the switch from Outlook to Gmail. Gmail has two must-use features that are essential for my email process:
Archive
A single click or swipe can archive your email. Archived emails go to the “All Emails” folder. They are never deleted. This means you can find them in that folder or by search. Beware, this is the Gmail way of dealing with archived mail. In Outlook the archived mail folder is deleted occasionally. This can be changed in the settings.
Emails that do not require an action from my side are moved there. I lower the cognitive load by rarely deleting or flagging as spam. Archived email is accessed through search, so an extra email doesn’t hurt. Another way to put it is: archived email is only consciously accessed.
Snooze
Sometimes I cannot do everything connected to an email. Examples are: replying, doing another task or calling someone. Or I just don’t have the time to do it. Then I cannot archive the email, because I would forget about it. Instead, I snooze it. Just click the button and choose a day and time. Snooze means the email is taken away from your inbox and will re-appear on the day you chose. Pick a day on which you will likely know more or have the time to do everything required by this email.
Specific use-cases:
- Delegating: This is also THE tool to use for managers. When I delegate a task by forwarding an email to someone, I snooze that email. When it’s back in my inbox, I can directly see if something has happened in this thread. Snoozing the email until the deadline I gave, helps me remember who had to do which tasks by when.
- Following-up: When I send an important email that I want to follow up on, I snooze the sent email. This is the fastest way to ensure follow-ups.
Habits
Depending on your industry and other factors you need to define how often you want to check your email. I have all notifications off. I open emails whenever I need an email for a task — or every other day. This batching helps me to get to inbox 0 without much distraction. At the same time, everyone gets a reply within 1 business day.
Challenges
Inbox 0 is a superior way of working. But it comes with unique challenges. One of them is, that snoozing is so simple, you might end up snoozing the same email multiple times.
Conclusion
No other email process comes even close to this in terms of ease, efficiency and reliability. Just give it a try for a month and you’ll see!
I wrote this article to communicate this process to my employees and colleagues. I encourage you to do the same if you believe in inbox 0.
Have you discovered any additional features for managing email well? Tell me @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-mundin/
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