I’ll admit it. My inbox is usually overflowing. And that is not with junk mail and spam (my beloved gmail keeps all that stuff out of my inbox). There are, of course, lots of emails that I don’t need to read and do not need to respond to: store newsletters, lists of students absent from school, Facebook updates. But there are lots that I do need to read, lots I do need to respond to, and lots of other stuff that should be taken care of to keep that little number to the right of “inbox” at zero. That is rarely the case. So, I thought I would share a great article for you on The Simplest Way to Clear Out Your Email Inbox. This article, written by Leo Babauta, author of Zen Habits, is reprinted with permission.
In a sentence: Don’t reply or even read most of your emails.
Your inbox can be cleared in minutes with that method.
Here’s how I suggest you do it:
- Select all junk mail, newsletters, routine notifications, auto-replies, joke emails, chain mail, ads, anything else not super important. Delete em.
- Select about half (or more) of the other emails that you know are not important, just from the subject line. Archive em.
- Quickly read through the rest, archiving almost every one of them. Select a few to reply to or act on (5 at the most). Those will be your most important.
- Reply to them in three sentences or less, act on them immediately, or put them on your calendar to do later.
Done.
Following this method, you can process your inbox in less than 5 minutes if you’re quick (use keyboard shortcuts).
What? But … what about all those emails I need to reply to? President Obama gets thousands of letters a day, and only reads 10 of them. This method forces you to simplify, to focus on what’s really and truly important.
Then, when you’ve saved all that time you might normally spend on email, go and Do Something Amazing. Oh, and only do this once or twice a day at most — the rest of the day, stay out of email.
Try it for a day or two. Tell me if the world falls apart. I bet it won’t. If it does, I’ll buy you a beer. If it doesn’t, you owe me one.
This is about something a bit deeper: our need to reply and act on every single request that comes in, rather than to take control of our work days and do what we know is important. You don’t need to respond to every email, act on every request, or even read everything that comes your way. You can choose the essential ones, and then get to work on what really matters. And if you tell others that you’re doing this, that you’re not going to reply to every email, they’ll eventually stop expecting you to reply.
Note: I realize this method won’t work for everyone … but I did say this would be a simple method. You can use it to get even simpler than the steps I listed above — just choose 1-5 emails to respond to/act on, and archive all the rest.
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I think I need to give this method a try. Goodness knows my inbox is not at zero right now. I need to do something to control the chaos. What about you?
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Thats a great tip. I have one more that might be useful for some people:
This is why I LOVE Gmail. The “Filter” feature is awesome.
If there are newsletter subscriptions that would take up more than 2 steps to unsubscribe, I’d make a filter in Gmail and tells it to just delete the email in the future.
This applies to some of the freebie Yahoo Groups that I joined but decided to leave (they clogged up my inbox big time), and its a lot of groups (was a freebie hoarder), so now I don’t get any emails from them anymore after filtering them.
Newsletters like J.Jill, PBteen, Martha, etc – I read the subjects and if I find them interesting, I archive them.
This is some great advice. I need to let go of the compulsion to read it all!
OMG, I just needed to read this today!
Thanks sooooo much!
If I’m at home working at my PC, I check my email like 50 times a day… And I get frustrated if nothing new is there… I’m going slightly mad! LOL
Thanks again!
HUGS!
Well, I have *two* inboxes…personal and work. The work inbox currently stands at just shy of 3000 emails. That doesn’t include what’s in the sent box. My personal inbox has roughly the same #. It’s down right scary at times! So yes, I need to do something!
I need this or something…my inbox is nearing 10K with over 7500 unread…HELP!!
Excellent advice……I don’t get a ton of emails, but there are certainly plenty that I don’t need to read or act on. I’ve also unsubscribed from a lot of sites which has helped to cut down the volume.
My inbox is nearly always at zero – its a bit of a compulsion for me. They only items I let linger are those I will need to take action on within the next day, but for which that action takes more than a couple of minutes. David Allen (GTD) has the 2 minute rule – which I find really helps. Go ahead and do anything that you can complete within 2 minutes.
I also don’t file any of my emails anymore. They simply get archived – through “Archive” in Gmail or my one Outlook folder at worked called “Archive”. Search and Sort make it super-easy to find anything I might need.
Now I just need something that will help me read my blogs…or summarize them so I know which ones to follow up on:-) I have blogger, but you know I’m a sucker once I see the summaries!