Email Inbox Zero: Managing High Volume Email

posted by   Ian Wyatt   |    January 15, 2009

Posted in   Business Financial Publishing   |   Comments

I was recently turned on to the concept of Inbox Zero, an efficient system for managing a high volume of email messages.

The Inbox Zero system was conceived by Merlin Mann, a well known life-hacker and blogger at 43Folders.com. Merlin developed his Inbox Zero system in order to help better deal with a high volume of email messages. Check out 43Folders.com series on Inbox Zero and watch Merlin's presentation at Google Tech Talks - it is well worth the time.

I am definately a high volume email user. In 2008, I sent over 20,000 email messages. I received several times that many emails - maybe 60,000 to 80,000 messages. Until earlier this month, this was my approach to email. Save everything, except the email spam. Don't delete messages. My email inbox was a digest of my life. And I would sort through the 20k messages that were in my inbox at any given time, sorting by date, subject line, or name in Microsoft Outlook, or searching for things via Google Desktop for the hard to find stuff. My inbox was always full, and caused lots of problems with Outlook - including frequent crashes (gotta love Microsoft products).

Inbox Zero is focused on getting me to get rid of emails, and process to zero. Processing to zero means taking action on ALL emails every time you check your email. One of the core concepts is to convert emails into actions.

Merlin outlines five potential outcomes of an email (in order of desirability):

1. Delete (or archive)
2. Delegate
3. Respond
4. Defer
5. Do

Some of the ideas and tips for processing emails are the following:

• Do email less: check email once per hour for 10 minutes, turn off auto-check, and close your email program for periods of the day
• Always empty email inbox after checking mail
• Multi-tasking doesn't work - focus on email for short periods of time, not constantly throughout the day
• Time and attention is limited
• Email is only a medium for communication
• Checking email is not enough - take action
• Don't live in your email
• Take email messages and turn them into actions or items to complete (i.e. a to do list)
• Get out of email, and have a life

How is Inbox Zero working for me?

I began implementing Inbox Zero earlier this month. I'm not 100% there. Here is what I did to get started:

I starting my moving all old emails into a new folder named "2008". All old emails that were in my inbox, went into this folder. I then created folders based on topics (i.e. Advertising, Biz Dev, Marketing, Newsletters). And a folder named "Actions - To Do".

I then moved all previously flagged emails into the Actions - To Do email folder. And for all new mail that arrived, I processed, deleting most emails as I dealt with them. For messages that require more work than I have time for, I move them into the Actions - To Do folder. All other emails are either responded to, deleted, or filed. I use my seperate topic folders to save messages that are important that I wish to reference. Merlin recommends ONLY having an Archive folder for all emails, and NOT using folders to file messages. And my implementation of his plan differs from his recommendation.

I end every day with zero emails in my Inbox. Throughout the day, I don't always process to zero. I'm working on getting there. I'm definately loving having fewer emails in my Inbox, and proactively dealing with my emails, deleting more messages than I ever did before, and turning emails into actionable item.

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