Inbox Zero allows you to quickly and efficiently deal with every email that comes into your inbox. Once it’s been dealt with, it’s out of sight and out of mind–meaning you can get back to work on the stuff that matters without having email in the back of your mind. There are hundreds of articles and videos on this subject.
Here are some of the few benefits from using an inbox zero method. Keep in mind, there are many methods to use for inbox zero.
- Increased productivity: By regularly processing and organizing emails, you are able to focus on what’s important and avoid being overwhelmed by a cluttered inbox.
- Improved communication: By responding to emails in a timely manner, you are able to maintain good communication with colleagues, clients, and others.
- Better organization: By keeping your inbox organized, you can easily find important information when you need it.
- Reduced stress: With a clean inbox, you’ll have less stress and anxiety about responding to emails.
- Improved relationships: By responding to emails quickly and professionally, you can improve your relationships with colleagues, clients, and others.
Here’s some material taken directly from entrepreneur.com.
Why should you keep your email inbox empty? The benefits are many:
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- You won’t miss an important email again when you use the Inbox Zero method.
- You won’t leave people hanging because you’ll respond to each email in a timely manner.
- You won’t become a bottleneck in your organization.
- You won’t feel stressed about thousands of emails in your inbox.
- You respect others by responding to them promptly.
- You’re able to feel great knowing that you have nothing else to do so you can get on with more creative, fulfilling tasks.
Below are some articles and videos I encourage you to read through.
The main idea with email is to understand that your inbox is a method to receive communication. Once you receive this communication, you must take action on each, and it’s always better to do things in batches. Most people look at their inbox and they see messages. They see a list of messages but when I open my inbox I see something different. I see a set of actions actions that are telling me to do things like reply review due and meet.
And that’s the secret. Emails aren’t messages their actions. I know it seems simple but sometimes it’s the most obvious things that are overlooked. You should look at your email only a few times a day. Maybe start with once an hour and go from there. When you look at your email, your job is to clear out your inbox. This can usually be done in under 5 minutes.
- Action Item
- Quick Reply (under 3 minutes)
- Long Reply (Needs a bit more time to reply, maybe some research or a report to answer a client request)
- These are the only types of emails that remain in my inbox, and they remain in my inbox no longer than 3 days.
- I often turn these into tasks and get them out of my inbox by archiving and saving the message link in my task.
- Calendar Event Reply
- Task or Read Later – Send to project management
- Use URL to refer back to the email to create a task in our project management system
- Can use project management tool extension to create task
- Can be a “read later” in your read later section of your project management system
- Store as reference
- Article want to read later
- Video want to watch later
- Archive, delete
- Archive
- Not involved, I’m not needed
- No action needed, might need to reference later
- Delete
- Belongs in trash, will never need
- Understand that Archive is still in your mail, just not in your inbox. Archived emails can still be searched AND will appear in All Mail
