Monday, January 17, 2011

Inbox zero

Inbox zero is a method to manage and sort your emails in the inbox strategically, so that your emails are sorted and you don’t need to worry about them. Inbox zero means that you have systematically categorized each email in a way that you know exactly when and how to take action on those emails based on their priority. Deleting mass emails and sending them to trash or junk folder is not an inbox zero process. Having said that, it does not in the least mean that we waste valuable work hours into reading unimportant emails that can be read at a later time.

Inbox zero gets us to manage our emails, where we sort them as per the actions we want to take on them and in what order, and by doing so the time taken to get the inbox to zero is completed in much shorter time and we still take care of the important mails first and next ones after that and so on, without overlooking any email that may be important.

Here, we need to pay attention to a few basic pointers.

Categorize them in various folders. Like, Do, Delegate, Archive, Respond etc.
Tag mails with colors or stars that need your immediate attention, and a different color for different emails with different priority.
Use filters and delete spam or put them in spam folders.
In case of outlook, you may create rules for some emails that come as notification, or subscriptions or anything else that may not be very important as soon as it hits your inbox, to go into a certain folder marked separately, and you can check them later.
Set reminders to few mails that can be checked later, this may help you avoid the hassle of remembering the date and time to respond to them.


Your email keeps accumulating because you don’t have the time to respond to it, which is certainly reasonable, however, overloading of inbox can be immensely stressful and irritating, especially at work, it may also not allow you to focus on your non-email work without interruption or distraction. Inbox zero is a process to get you out of this demanding and time consuming situation.

With this technique in place, 20 minutes is what you need for this process to be complete even if you get a couple of hundred emails a day.

Get this process going at least 4 to 5 times a day depending on your email volumes.
It will make your work and your life organized and easier,
It will also give you more into your actual priorities.
This process also helps us to increase productive hours


Your email keeps piling up just because you don’t have the time to respond to it, which is certainly reasonable. You also afraid of losing track of the email you haven’t responded to for sometime, all that can cause unnecessary stress to a lot of you. Inbox zero is a process to get you out of this annoying situation.

You really cannot control what comes in the inbox all the time, they can cause anxiety because you may want to know what most emails are about but due to lack of time, you may be unable to sit down to go through all of them immediately. Therefore it becomes crucial that you know which email needs how much time and attention and which can be forgotten forever without worrying about them at all, and at the end of it you spend only as much time on an email as it is required and not the whole day. Inbox zero comes in very handy in this situation. This holistic method is a perfect way to profitably and systematically manage not only your email box but also your valuable time.

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