

The Gmail Zero project: commitment device for Inbox Zero - dreeves
http://beeminder.com/gmailzero

======
arthurb2
After not understanding how it was possible to get inbox zero, I remembered
that Gmail has an Archive box.

I personally leave everything in the inbox and concern myself about reading
all emails flagged important... am I the only one to not use the archive
function?

~~~
Brashman
I actually don't know anyone that uses the archive function.

My "inbox zero" equivalent is to have no unread e-mails as I often leave
e-mails that I need to respond to or handle as unread.

~~~
Aidan
Gmail's Archive function is (or at least was, 8 years ago) its best feature!
If you're not using it, you're Doing It Wrong.

If you think of your inbox as a to-do list (where the most basic task is "read
this"), then the most common pattern ITDBG (In The Days Before Gmail) for
managing your to-do was using read/unread as your done/todo flags.

This was annoying; when reading an email that can't be actioned right away
you'd have to go back and mark it as unread. Trivial, but it always felt like
there was a better way.

When Gmail launched with it's Archive feature, it was definitely an "ah-hah!"
moment. Now the read/unread flags had no hidden meaning, and your to-do list
was simply whatever your saw in your inbox. When you action an email, away to
the archive it goes.

Reaching inbox-zero is a gloriously satisfying moment. Why yes ... I WILL read
some google news.

~~~
Travis
Disagree. And if you're telling someone they're doing something wrong, you may
be overemphasizing your point.

I use priority inbox to filter out the messages that I ignore 99% of the time.
For items I need to act on later, I use stars. With P.I., I can hide or show
my Priority emails, my starred emails, and everything else. So things that are
new can get my attention, or I can focus on finishing something up, etc.

I don't disagree that your system works effectively for you, but I think it's
a silly statement to tell someone else they're doing it wrong (especially
silly to capitalize the phrase Doing It Wrong.)

------
Brashman
I don't understand what happens if I "slip". It sounds like there's money
involved, but it's not clear at all.

~~~
jmillikin
This is Beeminder, so pricing is at <https://www.beeminder.com/money>

You can "play" for free, as long as you're on track to meet your self-imposed
goal.

If you set a goal, and then fail to work on it, you get one free "reset". If
you fail again, you can either pledge money to reset again, or create a new
goal (leaving the old, failed goal as a badge of shame).

It's a clever system, which acts to strongly reward setting realistic goals.

The only thing is, you have to be a bit careful if you're the kind of person
to push yourself too hard. I set a beeminder to practice piano every day, then
kept increasing the practice time, and eventually just burned myself right
out. Go easy.

------
swalsh
This beeminder thing is cool, they should make an app so I can limit how much
time I spend on things such as Reddit or Hacker News.

~~~
dreeves
You can do that! Choose a "Set a Limit" goal...

Here's me beeminding my time on Hacker News: <http://beeminder.com/d/hn>

------
adambyrtek
I like the underlying idea, but the fact that this requires access to my Gmail
account is a show-stopper for me. Email is simply too critical to leak to some
external applications, even a trusted one.

~~~
dreeves
It's not like that baby, we swear it!

No, you're right, it sucks that Google oauth just has an email scope without
anything more fine-grained, like just seeing message counts.

------
brunorsini
I am already a slave to my Gmail, so I really don't see how putting even more
pressure on my back would do me any good. What I really like to see are tools
that actually help me get to the bottom of my inbox, Boomerang being a great
example (email "snooze", very useful for cooling some threads down -
<http://www.boomeranggmail.com>)

~~~
dy
I really like followup.cc (similar to Boomerang) but you'd be surprised how a
little stick can help.

~~~
dreeves
I agree that <http://followup.cc> is better than Boomerang. Though I like my
home brewed Google Apps Script solution best of all, based on
[http://lifehacker.com/5825634/how-to-add-a-snooze-button-
to-...](http://lifehacker.com/5825634/how-to-add-a-snooze-button-to-gmail-no-
extensions-required)

By using integers as labels I can snooze things for a specified number of days
with just a couple keystrokes. And I'm not relying on an external service that
way. Emails with the label "1" are not in my inbox today, but they
automatically will be again tomorrow.

------
melvinmt
I consistently have more than 3,000 unread mails but I like having everything
in one mailbox without archiving it. The reason for that is context. If I'm
looking for mail C I know it's behind mail B. It's my way of keeping order in
the chaos. Not so much with inbox zero, you lose all context and you will have
to rely on your memory to retrieve your mail.

~~~
dy
The brilliance of Gmail threads is that it reintroduces context immediately
for a thread. As a developer, you should know that multithreaded context is a
bad idea... :)

------
septerr
After Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Critique. As if my inner chastiser
wasn't hard enough to deal with :/

Sorry, this will only increase my stress. It is not the solution. Just like
the emails weighing down on you.

~~~
dy
You're in the uncanny valley of stress where it's enough to upset you, but not
enough to get you to fix it :)

Perhaps an increase in stress level is exactly what you need to really get
this fixed since you do care about it.

------
hexvector
I currently have over 15,000 unread emails (not even archived). I see no point
in reading them all, I've already looked at the titles.

E-mails I care about are filtered into folders or marked as important.

~~~
dy
The idea for this was inspired by Getting Things Done (by David Allen). The
key idea is that to achieve productivity, you need a clear mind. A clear mind
is knowing that everything in your life is either shelved away for Archival
purposes, has a clear present next action or is awaiting followup from someone
else.

The 15,000 unread emails would drive me crazy. Perhaps declaring email
bankruptcy is a way to get out of it?

------
jim-greer
Does this work with Priority Inbox? I don't even had a 'Read' counter...

~~~
dreeves
Alas, I don't think so. It also doesn't really work if you let your number of
Unread messages grow without bound, since it's only looking at how many
messages you've read but left sitting in your inbox.

I personally don't like the priority inbox concept. I really want to have full
control over what I allow to go out of sight out of mind. If I got a truly
overwhelming amount of email then I guess I'd be happy to trust that to
Google.

In a sense I do have an overwhelming amount of email but not so much that I
can't at least look at everything that comes in and decide for myself what can
be ignored.

~~~
jim-greer
Do you know how to see the 'read' system label? It doesn't show up for me in
'manage labels'.

~~~
bsoule
Gmail is a bit inconsistent about that by default: it shows you the number of
individual _unread_ messages, and then the total number of _threads_ , so you
can't use subtraction to get an accurate read count. GmailZero gives the
number of fully read threads (unless you have a really huge inbox, in which
case it counts the bare read msgs until you get down) -- so if a thread has an
unread msg it goes back to an unread thread and doesn't count against you.

------
bfung
typo(?):

    
    
      I, <Need To Sign Up?>,
      pledge to get my Gmail inbox
      to 10 *UnRead* messages
      and keep it there.

~~~
dreeves
Ah, not a typo but I can see how that's confusing for people who mark things
read vs unread instead of archiving vs leaving in the inbox.

GmailZero only works for people who (try to) diligently archive messages. It
doesn't count Unread messages against you since you don't have control over
those.

------
peterwwillis
This kind of obsession with efficiency only leads me to one place:
<http://www.subgenius.com/>

