Inbox Zero

Inbox Zero is an approach for managing your inbox with the goal of minimizing the number of emails and time spent in your inbox [1] [2].

My Strategy

• Prefer search over folders. Creating folders is a losing battle. You should only have your inbox, which is the folder that holds your incoming email, and a "processed" folder, sometimes called deleted or archived, for emails that have been dealt with. This emphasizes the state of the email rather than the topic.

  NOTE

  I prefer archiving over deleting in case it needs to be referenced later.

• Create email rules to automatically move junk email into a "processed" folder marked as read. These junk emails could include newsletters, promotional emails, and notifications that do not require action.

• Non-actionable emails should be moved to "processed" as reference.

  TIP

  If this email follows a common pattern, consider whether a rule can be created to move this automatically.

• Emails that are actionable should be responded to immediately (if they take less than 2 minutes), forwarded/delegated, or deferred to a task management system.

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_Mann#Writing
2. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/inbox_zero