20 Years of Gmail & Inbox Zero

Gmail turns 20 in Apr 1, 2024 and it is hard to imagine tech products with such a long lifespan. Email, in general, has had a long run, and it is based on a few internet protocols that make it work (SMTP, IMAP, POP3, and then some: MIME, Base64, etc.), and through the years we’ve seen a number of email systems with clients for desktop, mobile, and web. Gmail is the undisputed king of web-based email clients, and it revolutionized the way we communicate by offering us a decent search engine, and the ability to store all our mail messages. And an amazing anti-spam system, to boot.

For all my sysadmin friends that managed, or still manage their own mail servers, you will relate that maintaining the amount of resources to offer a semi-decent email experience is expensive. Gmail offers a great value for the price: free for internet users, and educational organizations; and at a small one for enterprise users.

How we communicate, and the options available to do it now, at a personal and professional level are changing, and people now DMed on different platforms: Whatsapp, Instagram, Twitter (and no, I’m never calling it X), etc., and on the team side: Slack, MS Teams, Google Meet, etc. Email is still around, and Gmail certainly is very much alive with 1.8B users. We continue receiving tickets, login information, and personal / professional communication via email. Email is the minimum communication denominator.

Inbox Zero

But you’re probably overwhelmed by the amount of email you receive, and are not as effective at email as you should. Inbox zero is here to help you. You should be able to comfortably process a few hundred messages daily. Here’s the quick and easy way to do it:

• Start by setting 3 20 min blocks in your calendar to process email every working day (8 h, 12 h, and 16 h, for example).
• Gmail settings:? General: Mail notifications off, and Keyboard shortcuts on; Labels: read-through, to-do, and waiting? (I have an extra label to tag messages from my managers, but not really needed for inbox zero); Inbox: Multiple inboxes … (1) label:to-do? | To Do, (2) label:read-through | Read Through, and (3) label:waiting | Waiting… Show 99 conversations per page …? Multiple inbox positions: Right of the inbox… Reading pane position: below the inbox … Filtered mail: don’t override filters; Advanced: Auto-advance: enable.

Now you’re ready to adopt a fast processing of your inbox. I follow a slightly different version of the 2-min rule from Getting Things Done: read subject, and message (if it’s not too long), and decide:?

• Do I need to answer? And can I do it now? Do it, write your reply, and hit ‘send and archive’. If not, then continue to the next question:
• Do I need to do something about this message? If yes, move it to “To Do” (hint: type v .. then type t and enter will do it, 3 keys), if no, then ask yourself:
• Do I need to wait for something to happen or someone else to answer or do something? If yes, move to “Waiting” (type: v w enter), if not then ask yourself:
• Is this something I need to read and concentrate on? If yes, move to “Read Through”, and if it’s really important, like the start of project, work with a deadline, etc., add a 1-hour (or more if needed) appointment in your calendar to read/act on this message. If not:?
• There’s no more options, just archive or delete the message... What?! Without reply or acknowledging that I read it? Yup, drop it, it’s not important and you should not devote any more time to it.

Repeat the process with the next messages in your inbox, until your inbox is empty.

If you ask the questions while you’re reading the subject/first few lines of the message, it should take you a few seconds per message. Maybe up to a minute if you answer immediately. And after doing this for a few days, you won’t even have to think about the “questions” or the keyboard shortcuts; you’ll be an email machine. You’ll be able to process 100 or 200 emails per day, easily.

Now, this is only the processing part. The actual work comes when you go to your To-do (most important) inbox. Ideally, this inbox should be empty at the end of your day, or with very few messages. These would be the important things to get done when you open your email.

?When the thing you were waiting for, another message maybe, you’ll go to the appropriate message on waiting and act on it. Sometimes, when that thing happens, I move the message to To Do (v t enter).

Fridays and Saturdays are my “Read through” time for me. And I go over all the messages in that inbox with a coffee, and a ton of time to pay attention. Hint, don’t send me long emails or they will be read until the weekend. ??

That's it, that is inbox zero, and there are many books, videos, and variants of the technique. The idea is just to make email useful again.

Happy 20 year anniversary, Gmail!?

Will I continue using email for a long time? Sure, I love Gmail’s search and having a single archive for tons of stuff. Will you?