Zero Inbox and How To Get There

After four years at my current organization, I finally achieved (albeit briefly) zero inbox this morning. Then, I completed it in my Google email inbox within that same hour. My heart raced as I recognized that I had nothing in my inboxes. It was an odd, fleeting sense of elation. Had I conquered what was deemed?a mythical achievement?

Zero inbox is a strange and elusive goal that may mean much to some people. For me, it was a touch of both compulsiveness and feeling organized. It was obsessiveness, it took months, and I chipped away at it. Now the question is, where do I go from here?

I started the year with hundreds of emails in both inboxes (work and home). After a week-long holiday break from any digital work besides the odd tweet, I felt suddenly overwhelmed coming into the year. I have heard and toyed with?zero inbox?for years but found it was never within my grasp. But, given the stress of the past two years with the pandemic and the blurred balance between work and home, I felt that I had to try it. Of course, it's easy to delete everything, but it's highly impractical. I had a boss who deleted all emails at the end of the day, but I know this tactic would haunt me (e.g., "Did you see my email?"). My work life requires paper trails for follow-ups and monitoring situations. My home life involves receipts, invoices, and family/friend contacts. Clearing the decks in one fell swoop sounded great but wasn't feasible.

But inaction wasn't feasible, either. I've looked over peers' shoulders to see the little red dots on their email programs number in the thousands. They love the idea of saving everything and searching for it when needed. My issue with that is simply bandwidth (for both work and home) and knowing that email searches don't always bring up the required results. Plus, a big red dot with a large number next to any app icon makes me nervous. App psychology has conditioned me to freak out appropriately.

How did I do it?

• Put any work items or requests into my Reminders app for my Macbook and iPhone and made sure the platforms were synced. So, instead of flagging the emails, I put them in as work or follow-up items.
• I went through 20-30 backlogged messages a day constructively. It was oh-so-tempting to delete at random. I stayed the course.
• Folders - I'm always surprised when people don't create folders for their email. While I'm against rules that send messages directly to folders (fear I'll miss something), I file my inbox into these folders at the end of each day.
• Download and delete attachments, don't use my email as a file system.
• Delete any unneeded bcc messages or one-word replies (e.g., "Yeah.") Instead, use Slack or Teams for these needed responses.

So, what does zero inbox mean? Nothing other than a sense of order and accomplishment. And now that I'm here, I just refreshed my inboxes to find 20 new work messages and 35 Gmail messages. How can I maintain this blissful moment of Zen?

• Unsubscribe from listservs and emails that I don't need
• File or delete work emails at the end of each day
• Take time to get away from email for more person-person discussions via calls, meetings, Slack/Teams.

I may never be at zero inbox again, short of a purge or total system failure. Does this make me more productive? Probably not. But, it helps me feel a bit more in control, and in today's world, I'll take whatever feeling of control and accomplishment you can get.