Inbox Zero-II

Managing emails can at times be very painstaking and lengthy. This is especially true for professionals, whose work depends a lot on emails. Even otherwise, sitting on a pile of unread mails and 90% of them being ones you would like to open and go through, but don’t know where to start from can be very frustrating. This happens because of time constraint these days. We lead a very hectic and a brisk life especially in bigger cities, and wasting time on reading emails that are dispensable or can be read later, is a sheer waste of good time that can be used productively somewhere else.

The more email you neglect in your inbox, the more drastic and ruthless your processing would be. To waste time on responding to emails just immediately is not a very good idea till you have sorted all of them first. A regular process during this would be to keep deleting the obvious spam mails. Once you reach at inbox zero, with no more emails to sort, you may get back to the actions on each folder or set of emails, depending on the priority and urgency of that email. This process can be extremely annoying, time-consuming and can drain you of your energy, however, as you see that count dropping you will start feeling energetic again and feel like getting this over with as fast as you can. You will soon during this process, realize the value of that worthy time that you will have access to. This feels so good that you’ll never want to go back to the same stage where you let your inbox look like the most annoying thing in the world.

A few handy tips to maintain an Inbox Zero status.

Create various folders in your inbox, and name them as per your requirement if it is for business purpose, otherwise create folders and name them as –Respond, Assign, Forward, Urgent, Bills etc.
First, sort your emails into these as soon as they hit your inbox or when you sit down to work on them.
You can star, colours or flag emails in this folders that are very important.
Set reminders, in case you have an email that you can work on later, without the fear of forgetting it.
Create rules for your regular emails to go into a particular folder assigned, that you know you can check later.



Your email keeps accumulating because you don’t have the time to respond to it, which is certainly reasonable. You are 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 exasperating situation.

No one has control on what comes in your inbox all the time, they can cause anxiety because you may want to know what most emails say or need but are running short of time, so it becomes imperative 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 is undoubtedly a very holistic process to manage not only your email box but also your valuable time very systematically and profitably.

Tips and techniques for a clutter free inbox

Overloading your inbox could hamper your peace of mind. There are effective tips and techniques to ensure that your inbox is maintained to level zero all round the year. Following a systematic approach can ensure that your inbox is clutter free. Inbox is not meant to store all emails. The aim is to take action on the emails according to their priority. Yet there are some emails that needs to be stored and these can be filed for future use. Creating folders is a certain way to contain your inbox but this cannot be considered a standard practice. Though this can keep your inbox zero they push all these into folders that has to be looked into at a later stage. This can only increase the number of folders and create more work for you. A piece of advice is that check emails regularly, prioritize them and clear them immediately. This is the best way to accomplish size zero in your inbox.

There are certain emails that may need just less than a minute to reply. Do so and delete the message from your inbox. Mails that need more time to be resolved can be acted on through the day and cleared. All this depends on how much you can process in a day. If you want to move towards your goal of inbox zero then it is time that you clear your backlog first. All unprocessed files have to be acted upon. Once this is done, see to that only important messages reach your inbox. This way you will not have any worries about missing important messages.

Mailing list, job listing, automated messages are items that can be avoided or trimmed to a minimum. See to that if you can convert your daily newsletters or notifications into weekly or bi weekly. This could reduce the clutter in your inbox and can give you space to move around freely.

If you are running a website and cannot avoid getting messages from customers, here is a recommendation. Force the visitors to use a web form as this can help to contain your messages to a large extent. This way you can stay focused.

Of course you will be receiving messages from friends. Try opting for social networking websites where you can keep in constant touch with your friends, instead of clogging your inbox with casual emails.

Emails that need no action can be pushed to spam. Just trash them and move on.