
Inbox Zero for Life - craigkerstiens
https://xph.us/2013/01/22/inbox-zero-for-life.html
======
nopassrecover
> After a few weeks doing this stuff I didn’t just get there, I’ve stayed at
> inbox zero virtually the entire time

Would be interested to see how he's going 4+ years later.

At least for personal mailboxes I've found 'inbox zero' a thankless task and
have settled for "inbox as a feed" in which I trust that anything important
will catch my attention (e.g. via Priority Inbox or multiple emails) and
everything else will fade away. For what it's worth, this means I currently
have 12k+ emails that I'll never open.

~~~
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
Why don't you delete mails or unsubscribe from them? If you get so many mails
that you may need multiple reminder mails to get your attention, your system
sucks. If not for you, them for the people trying to communicate with you.

~~~
nopassrecover
This is just for personal mailboxes, where signal to noise ratio is very low.

Priority Inbox highlights anything that actually comes from a human.

Multiple emails are more effective (for me) for automated and marketing
emails, e.g. "right, I should remember to buy some more shirts from that
company that keeps sending me offers", or "that domain is expiring soon, I
noted that it was 30 days out last email but now it's getting closer".

Given the importance/actionability of these kinds of emails roughly
approximates status updates on Facebook's News Feed, my approach has been
similar (browse, trust that my eye will catch anything important, don't waste
effort trying to read through every single piece of information).

You're right that I could make an effort to read through each email I receive
immediately and decide whether its actionable, but this approach works well
for me with very little effort.

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pawadu
Please explain to me, what happens if you receive a < 30s email which is
related to a > 30s email that is being starred for later use? For example:

    
    
       30 s : "Hej Joe, can you send <document> to <client>?"
       5 hrs: "Joe, also make sure they have signed the NDA first."
    
    

This super-optimized-workday ideology can bite you in the ass if you take it
too far.

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busymichael
I use a similar system, but was still unable to overcome my email ADD. So I
built an app that keeps my inbox clean except for specific times of the day.

In short, any inbound email is redirected to a sub-folder. Three times a day,
those emails are moved to my Inbox.

Now I only check my email those three times a day because I know my Inbox will
be empty at all other times. At those three times, I apply a modified GTD
system to empty the Inbox entirely.

I whitelist emails from my wife so they arrive in real-time.

This works on mobile and desktop.

The app is public and free: [https://dndemail.com](https://dndemail.com)

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DKnoll
How I do this with Outlook: Create Search Folder in mailbox that displays only
Unread and Flagged items from the Inbox. Work out of this folder, flagging
items that I cannot address immediately and marking items as read that I do.

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thatwebdude
I guess I just protect my inbox more (or I'm just not that important - much
more likely) but I don't have an issue using "Inbox Zero" without an "Inbox
Zero" method. Am I alone?

------
fwn
Author just shifts everything important to gmails star menu.

If this advice is the solution to some peoples inbox problem then I don't
understand their inbox problem.

~~~
gregorymichael
Author addresses this in the conclusion:

> My biggest worry was that I’d just move the problem to another place:
> instead of an ever-growing inbox I’d have an ever-growing starred items
> folder. But a curious thing happened. My heavy inbox burden shrank a bit
> after the first processing session. And it just kept shrinking. My new
> starred items burden feels qualitatively different. Staring at a bold to-do-
> list inbox makes it all too easy to throw up your hands and close the
> browser. After all, even if you were to pick one of those emails and take
> care of it, it’d probably be replaced with 3 more, like a hydra, by the time
> you returned to your inbox. The ground is constantly shifting under you. On
> the other hand, your starred items folder only ever contains things that you
> put there. You can look at it, pick one thing to do, do that thing, and look
> again: there is now one fewer thing! You and you alone decide when to
> process incoming mail and star new messages. This might seem like an
> academic distinction, but let me tell you, it feels worlds apart, and I
> actually manage to knock off my starred items at a regular pace. They don’t
> pile up.

