How I achieve Inbox Zero (plus 7 tips I actually use daily)

Everyone has an email. But not many of them know how to use it properly. I don't have many opportunities to peek into other people's phones. But when I did, I almost always saw 1,000+ unread email badges on their mail app icon.

You need emails for almost everything online. People tend to only use it for signing up for online services, getting all junk mail piling up. And when there is one super important email that they are supposed to read, they have no idea where it is.

This situation is so common that people try to come up with ways to deal with their inboxes. One of them is Inbox Zero.

What is Inbox Zero?

Inbox Zero is a productivity strategy that seeks to declutter your mind by decluttering your inbox through methodically deleting, sorting, or otherwise clearing incoming emails.

Inbox Zero aims to keep an inbox almost empty at all times. There are 5 steps according to the Inbox Zero methodology. However, instead of going through them, I would like to share tips I use daily to make my inbox manageable.

My 7 tips to declutter your inbox

1. Archive

The first step is to remove unnecessary emails. You can either delete or archive emails you no longer need. Deleting an email will send it to trash box, which will later be deleted forever. Archiving an email will simply remove them from your inbox but still be searchable and available in your All Mail box.

I personally never delete emails from my inbox. Most email services are very generous. On average, you can store up to 1.5 billion emails before reach the storage limit.

If you have thousands of emails siting in your inbox right now, you can simply archive them all, knowing that they are not going away and you can always search for them. Voilà, you have achieved Inbox Zero!

I did this the first time to empty my inbox. Then I continue to check daily and archive emails I no longer need.

2. Unsubscribe

You need an email to sign up for online services. And most of them will automatically opt you into the mailing list, sending you regular marketing emails. Some of them are valuable. The rest are junk. But did you know that you can ask them to stop sending?

Every marketing email requires telling recipients how to opt out of receiving future marketing emails. This usually comes in the form of an unsubscribe link at the end of each email. Clicking this link will ask the sender to remove you from the mailing list and stop receiving emails from them.

All marketing emails must have this unsubscribe link. And it is illegal not to have one. Nowadays, email platforms like Gmail detect this link and display the unsubscribe button at the top of the email, making this much easier to do so.

Now that you have an empty inbox, start unsubscribing from incoming marketing emails that you are no longer interested in. And don't forget to archive them after that :)

3. Filter

Some emails will still get to your inbox offering no way to unsubscribe. This may include transactional emails and automatic spam emails. If you keep archiving them, the platform will learn from your choice and will later put them in the spam box. You can also make this process faster by reporting it as spam.

However, the spam box acts the same as the trash box where emails here will be deleted after 30 days. And many times you don't want to delete those emails. This is where filters come in.

You can create a filter in the 'Settings > Filters and Blocked Addresses' in Gmail and similar on other platforms. You can define the criteria to match emails and actions for them. You can also create filter from the mail itself by selecting 'Filter messages like this' menu at the top right.

For example, I have a daily report from the banking system. I don't read them but I want to be able to search for them whenever I need. I create a filter with a 'From' condition '@mybank.com'. Then assign it to 'Skip the inbox' and 'Never mark it as Spam'. This way, all emails from the bank will go straight to the All Mail box.

4. @mention

Sometimes you are the only recipient but the person who can take action is someone else. You can choose to forward the email to that person. But the first sender will have no idea that you have passed the email.

A better way to do is to reply with @mention. You can simply include people in the email loop by @mention, just like you do in a chat app. Doing so will automatically include that person in the Cc field and letting the original sender know that you are passing the conversation to someone else at the same time.

5. Reply all

When there are many people in the email thread, you can choose to 'Reply' or 'Reply All'. If you choose Reply, only people in the From field will receive the mail, while Reply all will also include those in the Cc field.

Since the 'Reply' button is the default one, it is common to see people make this mistake. To avoid this mistake, you can change the default reply behavior in the General Settings. This way the Reply All button will always be the first one.

6. Snooze

There are some emails that you cannot reply to now but will be able to in the future date. Don't leave them in your inbox. You can snooze them. Snooze will simply hide the email from your inbox and set it to be visible again at a later date and time.

For example, if the management asks me for the monthly report but the report will be ready in the next 3 days. Instead of keeping that email, I will reply to let them know when they can expect this, then snooze the email. This way I have a clean inbox to work on and will receive this email again in the next 3 days, exactly when my report is ready.

7. Create task

Finally, there are emails that you need to work on. And email sucks as a task management. Therefore, you should have a dedicated tool that helps you organize your daily tasks. If not, I recommend trying Todoist or Asana.

Both tools integrate with almost every email service, offering an extension to import emails directly into the platform as tasks. This way, you can continue your work in one place.

Your turn

Now that you have my 7 tips. The only way to make it work is to implement them into your daily routine. It may feel overwhelming at first. But I assure you, when you reach the point, it will be such a satisfying email experience.

However, do keep in mind that Inbox Zero may not be for everyone. You may have other ways to manage your inbox that are more effective for your use case. If you do, I would love to hear from you.

Originally published at https://www.cluelessfounder.com.