Inbox Zero for the win!

15 April 2023

I love the feeling of an empty inbox. The goal of Inbox Zero can feel elusive. For some people it may feel impossible. To me, Inbox Zero is not only achievable, it’s highly worthwhile. I’ll admit, it’s a wagon I fall off frequently. But once I get back to Inbox Zero, it feels so good.

It’s worth the effort to take a little time at the end of each work day and empty my email inbox. Here are just a few of the benefits I see:

I have only one day’s worth of email to deal with
I respond to messages more quickly
I take action more readily
My inbox is much more welcoming and less overwhelming

So why is it so hard for me to maintain Inbox Zero? I think like so many things, it’s a habit that’s relatively easy to maintain on a daily basis. But if you let a backlog build up, it quickly becomes overwhelming. I don’t tend to let my janine@peaceofmindorganizing.com email inbox get really full. But in recent weeks it’s been swelling to over 200. I’ve found that unless I’m focused on achieving Inbox Zero, I usually stop at about Inbox Twenty. Those last 20 messages are typically reminders to do something or their emails whose responses require thought.

This week, I’ve been working on whittling down my inbox by setting a timer for five minutes and deleting or moving as many as possible. I started by filtering unread messages, which were easy to deal with. Then, I’d sort by sender and mass delete the messages from newsletters or newspapers. Then I’d go back to sorting by date and deal with as many as I could. I did this in several five-minute mini-sessions and made a lot of progress. On Thursday, I created a task in my Bullet Journal of “Inbox 20 (or less!)”. I got it down to 20 and decided to keep going. I responded to emails that I’d been putting off dealing with since January. Next thing I knew I was down to five emails. So I decided to go for Inbox Zero. And I did it!

Granted, it’s been less than 48 hours, but I’ve been enjoying processing my emails and getting my inbox to zero several times throughout the day. It feels great starting the day with just those emails that came in since the close of business the day before. (If you’re interested in some tips about whittling down your inbox, check out this post, Slaying the email dragon that I wrote at the end of 2019.)

If you’ve ever felt you’d like to get to Inbox Zero but felt it wasn’t possible, trust me when I tell you that it is. And that it feels great! If you want to give it a try, let me know in the comments and I’ll cheer you on!

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

Tagged with: email, habits, productivity