

Inbox Zero for Life - bradly
http://xph.us/2013/01/22/inbox-zero-for-life.html

======
mitchellh
A matter of opinion perhaps but I don't consider having emails that require
action achieving "inbox zero" (even if they're not in your inbox).

I follow almost everything in this post except for the starring. Instead, I do
the following:

* If an email requires action and it is fast, I do it now, then archive.

* If an email requires action but will take longer than a minute, I keep in my inbox (but read). I clear these emails out once per day.

* If an email requires action but I can't because I'm blocked by some outside factor (waiting on something for example), I use followup.cc and redirect it back to me in a certain amount of time, then archive. When it comes back to me, I use followup.cc again if I'm still blocked.

~~~
taterbase
Thank you for the link to followup.cc. I've been looking for a tool/service
like this for a while.

~~~
nopassrecover
Ditto here (would just upvote but that's private now).

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krrrh
Two lab settings make all the difference when it comes to achieving inbox
zero. The first is auto-advance.

[http://gmailblog.blogspot.ca/2010/10/new-in-labs-auto-
advanc...](http://gmailblog.blogspot.ca/2010/10/new-in-labs-auto-advance-to-
next.html)

Being forced into the next email in your inbox upon archiving the last,
instead of back to the threadlist does wonders for keeping you in processing
mode instead of constantly presenting you with the inbox.

The other is "Send and Archive":

[http://gmailblog.blogspot.ca/2009/01/new-in-labs-send-
archiv...](http://gmailblog.blogspot.ca/2009/01/new-in-labs-send-archive.html)

This removes the second step of having to mentally re-process and archive a
thread after you've already sent a reply to it.

While you're in labs you should probably enable undo send too if you haven't
already.

~~~
dasil003
For the first one I just use the commands [ and ] which give you the
flexibility of going either way through your list.

~~~
krrrh
That's definitely true for archiving. The auto-advance lab feature also
introduces the behavior when muting or deleting. It's also nice if you've
already built up a lot of muscle memory on 'y' or 'e' for archiving or are a
home-row typist with weak pinkie fingers.

------
redwood
Am I the only Gmail user who never archives aything? My Inbox has every email
I've ever received in it.

Why? because it means I don't feel the stress of having to zero something out.
Sure, the more unread stuff I see, the more I know I'm backlogged...but I find
it handy to see recent emails toward the top... and that's what leaving
everything in the inbox does for me.

I admit when things get crazy at work, Priority Inbox works well for my
system.

~~~
Danieru
You're not alone I have seen several friend's inboxes and this appears to be
the common usage pattern. These same friends also tend to be very slow to
respond and they often just wait until we talk inperson. In class I've also
seen other students with inboxes full of unread email. My sister does not
unsubscribe from spam newsletters which she instead ignores.

Overall I doubt any good comes from these loose email practices. I may have
acquired business style email use earlier in life from the freelancing so I
may not be considering their situation.

When an email comes in I never leave it over a day to respond. Just two days
ago I got into a real-time email conversation with someone trying to compile
my open source project. I invited him unto gtalk and solved the compilation
issue in <5 minutes. Had I taken longer to respond he would have gotten bored
long before he could become a potential contributor.

~~~
buster
People not responding in time doesn't have to do with how they read their mail
but only with how they prioritize their life. You consider mail important
,they probably not as much. I follow the same "full inbox" approach and answer
quite fast to mails, in part because i do have email notifications everwhere.
I do answer mails with a certain importance at once and keep others on unread
or starred.

I know people that archive all mails and do respond slow in general and people
that respond fast.

------
MatthewPhillips
Can you really claim inbox zero if you've just moved the workload from the
inbox to the starred folder? Seems like the same problem with a different
name.

~~~
cwp
The problem with using your inbox as a todo list is that anybody in the world
can write to it. (citation needed.) The point of putting todo messages in a
separate place is to separate the activities of doing stuff (ie, the items on
your list) and deciding what needs to be done (processing your inbox and
building your list).

When you're looking at starred messages, you know that a) you've already read
the message, and b) there's an important task you need to do. Your job is to
remember what you wanted to do and get it done. When you're in your inbox, you
know that your seeing new information and your job is to decide whether or not
its important.

This distinction may sound trivial, but it makes a huge difference. Think of
it this way: When you read a message and then mark it as "unread," you're
throwing away all the work you've already done in reading and evaluating it.
Next time you encounter the message you're starting from scratch. By starring
it and taking it out of your inbox, you give yourself enough of a cue to
quickly resume processing the message where you left off.

~~~
TillE
But you can star something without moving it out of your inbox. It then moves
up into a separate list at the top; the delineation is very clear, and I don't
have to bounce between different screens.

Things you don't want to see again should absolutely be archived. But if
you're using the Gmail web interface, you don't have to slavishly adhere to a
literal interpretation of "inbox zero".

~~~
cwp
It's not about the label "inbox zero". In fact, I rarely have an empty inbox.
Usually there's a handful of unread messages and maybe a couple that are read,
but I haven't decided whether they need action.

What is important is limiting the distraction caused by new mail. If you're
working through your todo items and new messages are getting added to the
list, they'll distract you _even if you don't read them._ Of course, you
probably will read them, which is even more of a distraction.

By keeping todo items on a separate list, you can keep your attention on your
work, rather than on new messages. Then you process the inbox only when you
choose to direct your attention to it.

------
NamTaf
My work (a ~9000-strong ASX50 company) puts/used to put each and every one of
us Engineers through a day-long 'Working Smarter with Outlook' course. It'd
run the gamut from Outlook's structure and how to get the most out of it (eg:
telling you to piss off the various locational icons such as calendar,
journal, etc. in the bottom-left and use the folder tree instead), tips to get
the most out of appointments, using your calendar to fill your day up and keep
focused on tasks, to inbox management.

For inbox management, they preached the '4 D's' of inbox - Do, Defer,
Delegate, Delete. It works quite similarly to what this link is describing,
though including delegation helps include the managers who need to dish out
work to their team. I've always found this to be a pretty powerful tool, and
it seems many of my managers use it too. We've found that it's helped them get
a hold of the 'inbox noise' they often get bombarded with, given the overuse
of CC.

It's a lot of work to set up, but I encourage everyone to try one of these
approaches. Blocking out a chunk of your time and burning through emails
without any time spent on each of them is a really liberating feeling and
helps deliver this zen-like focus on your other tasks. I think it's the fact
that you're structuring your entire work schedule by doing it which helps so
much.

------
fdr
I have an alternative approach (that is not incompatible with this one) that
works well when one is not expected to deal with a lot of email not addressed
directly to me: I only process email that mentions me specifically in the
headers. Mailing list traffic of anything outside my most proximate working
group is thrown into a pile of mail I read -- or don't -- at my leisure. Doing
this, there's often not much mail addressed specifically to oneself.

This strategy probably has variable utility depending on one's role in an
organization: triagers and connectors between groups may not be able to use
this as successfully, for an individual contributors -- like me -- it seems to
work.

This only works in organizations with reasonable email hygiene where:

* People don't expect you to respond to something where you are not in the To/CC list

* People don't use expanded email aliases as opposed to more typical mailing lists.

This strategy is not unlike how one deals with being subscribed to large
mailing lists like, infamously, LKML (Linux Kernel Mailing List) people can
just ignore stuff and read at their leisure.

------
buster
I don't know, i like the usual workflow in gmail. The is "important and
unread" (my priority todo), "starred" (my todo or remember some stuff list)
and "everything else". Why would i need to do so much processing as this guy
suggests?!

I don't care for the large "everything else" list, it's just the latest stuff
i got for a quick look, that's ok. The first two lists are far more important
and always contain only a few items that are worked through.

So in the end i guess everyone has his own best workflow but i also think that
the gmail team did a pretty good job with the current design.

Hint: the only thing i really hated was the "comfortable" design theme that
became the new default.. Luckily it's just a click away to get to the
"compact" version, much much much better!

------
leephillips
I'm sure this will help some people - and I agree about not allowing an email
program to interrupt you. But the "inbox zero" movement seems to appeal mostly
to those who use impoverished MUAs like Gmail. I use Mutt and usually keep
2000-5000 emails in my inbox. Works for me.

~~~
paulhauggis
My gmail-based inbox has 15,000 messages and I don't have a problem..

~~~
tjbiddle
I had 12,000 emails in my inbox (Gmail) a bit ago. Just archived them all.

Honestly it does feel a little bit liberating :-)

------
parm289
Interesting article, considering today's Mailbox app [1] launch. The killer
feature of the app seems to be the ability to process emails in your inbox,
telling the app to send them back to the inbox at certain time intervals
(later today, tomorrow, next week, etc.).[2]

I've been casually learning Ruby over the past several months, and was
inspired by Mailbox to hack together a very rough snooze feature independent
of the app.[3] The Ruby app hooks into special Gmail labels and causes emails
in those labels to 'resurface' to the Inbox if certain conditions (mostly
timing, e.g. the 'Tomorrow' label resurfaces emails at 10AM the next day) are
met. It will take some time to develop the snooze workflow, but I like the
system so far. An independent snooze function also has the benefit of letting
me continue to use Sparrow to manage my email on iOS.

[1] <http://mailboxapp.com>

[2] <http://mashable.com/2013/01/22/mailbox-app-review/>

[3] <http://github.com/mattparmett/snoozer>

------
kamakazizuru
another trick i'd add on to the article - use the "Multiple Inboxes" view that
Gmail offers - add a pane for starred items (is:starred search pane) - and set
it to show only 1 item at a time - and position it above your classic inbox.
What this does is - shows you 1 starred email (i.e. todo item ) at a time - at
the top of your inbox. That way you always have 1 task ready for you to sort
out - and no other tasks to distract you. (you can always dig into the starred
items to see if theres something else you'd rather do / more important - but
this helps focus tremendously! )

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ivancdg
There are websites that turn email into a game; it shocks me how good a
motivator this can be (I guess part of me IS still a child).

My recent favorite is <http://emailga.me> (NB: gmail only)

The combination of timer count-down, smileys and 'rounds' is rather clever.
And more importantly: effective.

This doesn't help with the paralysis induced by longer emails that deserve an
equally thoughtful (read: time-consuming) reply.

For those I pick up the phone. It's retro, but saves time in many cases.

------
wahnfrieden
Hierarchies and sub-views suck when you want to view them all the time, every
day. Use the "Multiple Inboxes" lab feature to show all your starred messages
on the same home screen as your inbox. No more "learning to love" _gs_.
[http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-in-labs-
multiple-i...](http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-in-labs-multiple-
inboxes.html)

------
mhw
Just a small warning about starring things: unstarring items by pressing 'y'
from the Starred list (including bulk unstarring) is one of the operations in
GMail that doesn't have an 'Undo'. So a key sequence like 'gs*ay' will remove
lovingly-placed stars from a lot of email with no way (that I can find) or
reversing the operation. So don't do that.

------
DoubleCluster
I don't get much mail, but I usually respond to them at once and then leave
them in my inbox forever. If I need to take action at a later time I usually
still respond, and then write it on my paper todo list. I've got some filters
for mailing lists and other spammy things (bug reports etc.).

------
epaga
Shameless (relevant) plug: I wrote a little iOS app for getting to Inbox Zero
in GMail. It spits one email after another at you, forcing you to triage using
the subject line and a few lines from the message. <http://app.net/emptyinbox>

------
JosephHatfield
I feel sorry for people that need to devote so much mental energy to managing
their email.

~~~
d0m
They probably feel sorry for you too ;-)

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calinet6
This strikes me as a fundamentally poor user interface for incoming
information.

We should fix it. E-mail can be the input, but there's got to be a better way
to organize it so that it's not an input overload. I've got some ideas...

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Flenser
_2\. Do not use priority inbox... 3\. Do not use push notifications for
incoming mail on your phone._

I do both of these, but I have my phone set to only notify on priority inbox
and I only use priority inbox for family.

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ishansharma
Nice tips. Ever since I deactivated Push, life has been better for me. :)

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orofino
A recommendation that I would add, make it so that your starred folder DOES
push to your phone. That way you have access to that email even if you don't
have an internet connection.

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adjin
i just read them and stuff

------
Nux
Freak!

