Ken's version of 'Zero Inbox' email Management
Context
So i wrote an article last week on how I sometimes ask folks i interview how they organized their inbox, and it clearly created a bit of controversy with some interesting reactions from folks. So i've written this article to clarify a few things like..
Let me start by saying I first heard of 'Zero Inbox' email management well over a decade ago. I was reading an article in a magazine (yes, a printed one.. remember those? lol) about the CEO of Walmart and how he valued keeping his inbox clean.
And note that Walmart at the time, from memory, was either the largest company in the world by market cap or one of the largest. So if the CEO of the largest company in the world (by revenue and employees) was able to manage his job using 'zero inbox' you can safely assume you can as well.
And note that during the past 10+ years that i've been using this approach, i have used it in cases where I managed 100+ person org (with many dept's, and part of a global org) and got hundreds of emails daily, I have used it to manage a team of 30+ product managers, etc.
And so I have personally seen how this method scales well and don't think there is a single situation or job someone can give me... where I would not be able to use this method.
How do I do 'Zero inbox'?
There are probably a lot of flavors of Zero Inbox. And I would say that mine has clearly evolved over the years. When I first started doing it, i would make lots of folders and organize them into folders. And then like 7-8 years ago.. I realized that is a massive waste of time.
Then I realized the power of archive and the power of using starred items on Gmail. See screenshot above for an example of what my inbox typically looks like.
And now the logic flow looks like this:
I honestly do not know of a single person that is better at email management than me. Because in the past decade or so.. if i saw anyone that had anything i thought could be better.. I tried it and adopted it.
What are the key principles?
There are a few underlying principles:
What do I achieve with Zero inbox?
Why do I ask Product Managers & Project Managers how they manage their inbox?
For me, I consider it highly valuable for product and project folks to be very organized. If they cannot keep their inbox organized than i have seen a high correlation with keeping their sprints organized, or keeping complex projects organized.
Sure, there are probably exceptions. But in my experience.. not too many. And i've managed probably over 100+ product & project mgmt folk in my career...
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But even more important than being organized.. is that I want my Product Managers to be awesome OPTIMIZERS.
My Paul Graham Metaphor
YCombinator is famous on its application form for asking the question.. "Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage."
Now some lifelong corporate career folks working on their first startup and applying to YC might standup and complain..
"Hey Paul! Not fair!! I was told in my large corporate to always follow the processes and rules. And therefore I have never hacked a system nor would I want to!"
Now what would Paul think? Would he say.. "oh yeah.. true.. let me include these types of dudes in YC."
No he wouldn't. hahaha
He'd tell them to get lost (or rather he'd just archive their application hehe).
And for me my question on how you structure your inbox is along the similar lines... I want product and project managers that optimize the shit out of their systems and processes... like I do.
And its not that i want them to be exactly like me.. I hope they are different in many respects and have their own strengths. In fact I love when they are BETTER.
But in all the ways that i'm ok with them being different than me... not being 'Great Optimizers' is not one of them.
Just like Paul & YCombinator have decided that having people that 'hack the system and think differently' is NOT something that they need variety on. ALL YC company founders should have this trait.
CEOs and managers have said for decades advice like "hire people that are better than you." And so in my view this is just my version of that.
Some caveats
In my last post I noticed a number of aggressive folks disagreeing with me... and quite a few of them were engineers. And so let me add an important caveat... "I don't interview engineers because I am not an engineer."
And if I was hiring engineers... I would not care that much about whether they organized their inbox because the rules of the game are different in their job.
But for product and project managers... in my experience, they are fair game.
And let me end with a few parting words...
I run a d2c health ecom biz that is profitable
2 年One addendum i figured id add to this post as a number of people have written on the other post about how they manage their inboxes (without zero inbox) and it works for them.. But my main point is about optimization. And in my view from an optimization perspective there is no grey area. You could actually probably mathematically prove that this method above would outperform any other method that other folks have which consisted of them keeping tons of emails in their inbox. And measuring against a core set of KPI such as: 1. How much time spent on email overall? (Less = better) 2. Responsiveness to key emails (Faster = better) 3. Overall responsiveness to all emails that require a response (lower % unresponeded to = better) 4. Less time spent on searching (Less = better) You see.. if you were to take an unbiased group of 100 people who have varying levels of responsibility and types of jobs. Have them first try this method for a couple weeks and then try any other method where the inbox was full of emails... I have zero doubts that this method would win. And if someone could set up this experiment in real life id actually put money behind it. Because its math. Not opinion.
10+ years in leadership roles, including CEO and COO, across various start-ups ($100m+ in exits and M&A). Built and optimized teams and processes in fast-growing companies.
2 年I have used the Zero Inbox approach for the past ten years, but this star trick is exciting since I used a more complicated method. Now, I tried yours, and it is much more straightforward. A little twist to my system; thank you, Ken Leaver! But I prefer to delete the emails I'm not interested in, not archive. Archive only those which have a good chance to refer in the future. The rest is the same.
Author of Ride The Amazon Wave, I help Amazon Sellers get from 7 to 8 figures
2 年This is great Ken! I do it in a very similar way ?? I've tried too many solutions to count that overcomplicate things, and happy to see someone who understands complex stuff using this method ??
CEO @ Flapen | End-to-End Amazon Brand Launch & Scale | Research, Sourcing, Cataloging, Advertising & More
2 年Great article! A while ago, I joined a company with ~200 employees and ~40 projects (internal/external). So I needed to quickly catch up on nearly all initiatives and learn how to influence key decision-makers. I used a sales CRM (Pipedrive) to document, manage and automate relationship building. Organizing/centralizing all my activities, communications, notes, etc.