Inbox Zero for the win!
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.
Tagged with: email, habits, productivity
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.
Tagged with: email, habits, productivity
After ten months of a non-empty email inbox, I finally achieved Inbox Zero last week and I’ve managed to clear my inbox every day since. (Because once you get there, it’s easy to clear it, as long as you remain committed.) It seemed like a good day to repeat this blog post I wrote more than five years ago about achieving and maintaining Inbox Zero.
Tagged with: email, habits, worth repeating
I love the feeling of an empty inbox. The goal of Inbox Zero can feel elusive. For some people it may feel impossible. Not for me. I’ll admit, it’s a wagon I fall off frequently. But once I get back to Inbox Zero, it feels so good.
Tagged with: email, habits, productivity
I’ve had an on-again-off-again relationship with Inbox Zero. I’ve blogged in the past about the glory of Inbox Zero and how I’ve achieved it. Yet I invariably fall of the wagon. That usually happens when I’m stressed or busy or otherwise unfocused. But when I am in a headspace to be decisive, I can achieve the elusive empty inbox at the end of the day.
Tagged with: email, habits, productivity
Yesterday I had an unexpected day at my desk because of a winter storm and I spent some time getting my inbox under control. It was fairly painless. I started the morning with 267 messages in my inbox, 18 of them unread. (I use my Mac’s email client—the one with the icon of a postage stamp—on my desktop.) I decided that I wanted to get my inbox down to 20 messages and I wanted to do it swiftly. Here’s what I did.
Tagged with: email, habits, productivity
In the past I’ve been able to maintain an Inbox Zero habit for my email and have blogged a lot about how great it is. I truly believe it’s one of the best things I do for my sanity.
I’ve written before about the benefits of emptying my inbox every day. Inbox Zero feels like an unachievable—or perhaps even undesirable—goal to some. But I know from my experience that when I can empty my inbox each day I am more on top of my work life. And that makes me not only more productive, but happier.
Tagged with: email, habits, inbox zero, task management, time management, todoist
I’ve posted here before about how I achieve Inbox Zero. For years, I had an Inbox Zero habit, so that at the end of the workday, there would be no emails in my inbox. I have to admit that this year I let it slide. In recent months, my goal was 20 emails in my inbox at the end of the day, rather than zero. That proved to be an unsatisfactory goal—I never had the thrill of an empty inbox. Until recently.
I’m struck by how similar our email inboxes are to physical clutter. Many people deal with physical clutter, but I bet even those who manage to keep a tidy home have email inbox clutter.
Tagged with: clutter, clutter clearing, email, habits, productivity
I openly admit that I have been an email hoarder. I abandoned my emails on my old Windows computer when I switched to the Mac in 2008. And since then I had a tendency to hang on to all emails that might possibly come in handy some day.
Tagged with: clutter, clutter clearing, email, habits, productivity
I was delighted to be included in articles on a couple of high-profile blogs published by prominent magazines recently. I had to share.
Tagged with: email, organizing resources, press
My Inbox Zero policy has taken a beating in 2016. I blame my puppy, Bix, for allowing me to get behind on it. (I blame Bix for a lot of things…it’s very handy.) But whatever the reason, I’ve had a really challenging time keeping my inbox in check this year.
Tagged with: email, inbox zero
For five years, I’ve been extolling the virtues of my Inbox Zero policy. Honestly, emptying my email inbox is one of the best things I do to stay on top of all the aspects of my business.
Tagged with: backlog, backsliding, email, habits
As I wrote two weeks ago, I’ve fallen behind on a number of things, including my Inbox Zero habit. But last Wednesday I got my inbox down to zero messages once again. It felt so great—like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. It’s been a huge boon to my productivity and I’ve emptied each day since. I was going to write a new post about Inbox Zero and then realized that I’d have a hard time improving on the one I wrote this past November. So here it is.
Tagged with: aby garvey, accountability, email, habits, productivity
I strive every day to whittle my email inbox down to zero. It’s a strategy that has worked well for me for going on four years.
Tagged with: clean desk, email, habits, routines
Yesterday I had a lovely Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday and I think it’s just wonderful that we take time off as a nation to celebrate gratitude. It got me thinking about how grateful I am for a habit I developed in January of 2011. For almost four years, I’ve been clearing out my email inbox, taking it to zero (or near zero) virtually every weekday.
Tagged with: aby garvey, accountability, email, habits, productivity
I was out of town for five days in mid-September. I’ve been back a week and I still don’t have my mojo back.
Tagged with: clean desk, email, habits, routines, self-care, task list, travel
I have an Inbox Zero policy that I dearly love. It’s typically easy for me to maintain and keeps me feeling under control.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, email, inbox zero, timer
I’ll be celebrating three years of routinely clearing out my email inbox come January. I wrote this nuts-and-bolts post about how I do it in January 2012, after I’d been practicing this habit for a year. Now, more than a year and a half later, nothing’s changed. I use the same procedures and I’m still in love with this habit, which make my life unequivocally better.
Tagged with: aby garvey, accountability, email, habits, productivity, worth repeating
Several weeks ago, I subscribed to Revive Your Inbox a free, 21-day program to help you get a handle on your email.
Tagged with: email, habits, productivity
I do three things almost every weeknight at the end of the work day that help me to stay on top of my business, start the day feeling productive, and reduce the stress in my life. These three habits have a lot to do with my really enjoying being an entrepreneur. They are:
Tagged with: clean desk, email, habit, routines, task list
I’m all about goal setting. And I love doing it this time of year. This week and next, I’m working on taking stock of the year, seeing how well I did with the goals I set last year, and setting new ones for the coming year. I create measurable business-related goals.
Tagged with: clean bureau, email, goals, habits, resolutions, shannon wilkinson
It’s been over a year since I started my Inbox Zero habit. On January 2, 2011 I cleared out my email inbox. And, for the most part, it’s been empty at the end of each workday since.
Tagged with: aby garvey, accountability, email, habits, productivity
I’m not so keen on New Year’s Resolutions. I think we tend to make them when we get caught up in the hopeful feelings that a fresh, new year brings. But I think they’re frequently not realistic. And we don’t give them enough time. And when one goes by the wayside, we give up hope on all of them.
Tagged with: aby garvey, clean bureau, clean desk, email, goals, habits, resolutions, shannon wilkinson
I think habits and routines are incredibly important for making life easier and achieving what you want. The routines I have created have helped me, a naturally messy person, maintain a semblance of order in my home.
Tagged with: don't break the chain, email, exercise, habits
On January 2, I cleared my inbox down to zero email messages. And since then i’ve done it every work day except two, when I was out of town without my computer. That’s nearly five months of inbox zero at least five days a week. (I usually do it on the weekends as well.)
Tagged with: aby garvey, accountability, blogging, don't break the chain, email, habits, productivity
I’ve written here before about Don’t Break the Chain as a tool for helping create daily habits. The concept is that once you do something a few days in a row (which can be aided by marking a calendar), you psychologically don’t want to break the chain and you’re motivated to do the activity again.
Tagged with: blogging, don't break the chain, email, habits, productivity
I’m going to be 50 next year and like many people my age, my vision isn’t what it used to be. Reading, in particular can be challenging. I’ve been wearing progressive lenses (distance vision in the top, reading vision in the bottom, with a little intermediate in between) for some years.
Tagged with: clean desk, email, habits, irritations, routines
I am bursting my buttons with pride, as I report that I have achieved Inbox Zero each and every day since January 2. That’s 38 days in a row that I’ve handled each message that’s come into my email inbox.
Tagged with: aby garvey, email, habits
So far this year I’ve established a couple of new habits that benefited greatly by starting with a clean slate.
Last night, I reached the elusive Inbox Zero. That’s right, I emptied my email inbox. This isn’t to say I don’t have any email messages. It’s just that they’re filed away in folders (or “mailboxes” in Mac Mail parlance).
Tagged with: aby garvey, accountability, decluttering, email
Lately, I’ve been taking a moment to unsubscribe from promotional emails I receive on a regular basis that I usually delete. Just a moment ago, I unsubscribed from promo emails from a major electronics retailer. When I thought about the last couple of times I shopped there, it was when I had something specific in mind. It had nothing to do with these promotional emails, which come almost on a daily basis.
Tagged with: decluttering, email, mail
I’ve been keeping sort of a crazy schedule for the last week. Lots of work outside the home, lots of phone time at home, quite a bit of fatigue. The result is that my email inbox, which I usually try very hard to keep under control, has grown and grown.
Tagged with: aby garvey, email, mark forster, time management, time timer
Inspired by my friend, Margaret Lukens, I’ve decided to point out some of my favorite from this blog from Junes gone by. June is usually a pretty busy blogging month for me (though not so much this year). I had so many posts to choose from that I’m going to split the recap into two posts.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, accountability, clutter clearing, decluttering, email
Staying on top of email is a perpetual challenge for most people. There’s a midground between letting it be a distraction and letting it pile up. I’ve worked out a system that works for me, actually allowing me to get to the elusive inbox zero last week (though I was up to 15 when I closed up shop last night).
Tagged with: email, marissa bracke
As I mentioned in my blog post called email liberation, I embarked in 2009 on a goal of having fewer than 15 messages left in my email inbox at the end of each work day. It’s worked out very well.
Tagged with: email
Two months and a week ago, I blogged about how I was experimenting with inbox zero, that is keeping my email inbox pared down to just a few messages that required action. This represented a major changing in thinking for me. For more than a decade I typically had thousands of uncategorized emails in my inbox (and many more thousand filed in folders). I never found that to be a problem.
Tagged with: aby garvey, accountability, decluttering, email
I freely admit that I’m an email packrat. Since my hard drive is large, I have no problem hanging on to emails I think might come in handy some day. This is a habit I’ve had since I started with email in the 90s. And I don’t intend to change.
Tagged with: aby garvey, decluttering, email
This morning I read this interview with Gina Trapani, the lead editor of Lifehacker on Zen Habits. It’s an interesting interview. In addition to the many posts a day Trapani writes for Lifehacker, she’s the author of a paper version. Her book, which is now in a second edition called Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better is a compendium from the best hacks from Lifehacker.com. I haven’t read it yet, but I do believe I’ll be purchasing it.
Tagged with: email, lifehacker, mark forster, productivity, time management, zen habits
Just a few days ago, I wrote a blog post about taming my email box. I vowed to use the trusted-three method, which I read about on Lifehacker, to empty my email inbox. I said I’d try it out and report back.
Tagged with: decluttering, email
I have to admit that I’m a bit of an email packrat. It seems fairly harmless to me, as long as my hard drive is large enough, and somehow having the history of many of my email interactions gives me comfort.
Tagged with: decluttering, email