From hero to zero
Heard of zero inboxing? If you have, I hope you’re doing it already! For anyone who hasn’t, read on…
I switched over from regular old Gmail to Google Inbox a few years ago and it’s amazing. Here’s how you can make it work for you.
Think of your email as a TODO list. Really, everything in there has to be replied or actioned some other way. Even if it’s just reading something, you still want to delete/archive it.
If you handle an email straight away, three thumbs up for you. But just as often, you want to wave it away until later. What Google Inbox brings to the party is being able to ‘Snooze’ an email until whenever you want to deal with reading or replying to it.
If you’re like me, there’s almost always less than five things “to do”. And if you get it down to zero (that doesn’t mean everything’s complete, but they’re done for now at least) you get this lovely screen:
If you’ve a tonne of emails sitting there right now, do a bulk clearout. Old newsletters? Gone. Old orders? Gone. If something was that important in the first three pages, you’d have replied to it.
Clear out everything from your inbox that you don’t need. Just leave the stuff you want to deal with now, otherwise “Snooze” the college reunion emails until tomorrow (or even next year!). You simply don’t have to worry about them until Inbox reminds you again.
The workin’ man
Full disclosure: I am not a professional blogger after two posts and have a day job. I have a separate work email account which is regular old Outlook, but I treat it the same way as my personal Inbox account.
If I consider some email “done”, I drag it kicking and screaming into some dark crevice of a project subfolder (hmm that went a bit dark for no reason). I don’t delete them so I can always search for them later, or when something I said comes back to haunt me.
Some people recommend leaving everything in their inbox because that way they say it’s no effort to find stuff and everything’s searchable. Well, boffins have found ways to search across all your emails even if they’re tucked away under labels or project subfolders. Wonders will never cease. So those people are flat out definitively wrong. I think.
Whatever way you want to approach it, try zero-inboxing your work email as well. Then you can be all like…
Shut it down
Interruptions are literally distracting. Outlook blings and Inbox sounds… if I’m trying to concentrate on some work task, I still can’t help myself opening up an email alert and then I can’t help replying if it’s something quick. Then it takes a few minutes or more to get back into a heavy task.
Where was I in the middle of my scientificking?
Check your work email when you get to work, deal with whatever you want to, then shut it down.
Unless emailing *is* your work. Then you gotta decide if you want to get fired or not. Get into the habit of checking your email on the hour or every two or three hours (whatever’s doable) so you can get “proper” stuff done in between. If you can leave it off all day, bully for you!
Do the same with Google Inbox for your personal stuff – although I’m desperate for checking emails on my phone now that I think about it.
I think I’ll disable the email notifications on my phone and only check them once in the evening. I might even leave my phone upstairs out of the way and go cold turkey. Mrs. Plannister be all like….
More amazing stories of personal growth to come…
