Inbox Zero

Table of Contents

1. Inbox Zero

Inbox Zero is a rigorous approach to email management aimed at keeping the inbox empty – or almost empty – at all times.
Inbox Zero was developed by productivity expert Merlin Mann
According to Mann, the zero is not a reference to the number of messages in an inbox; it is “the amount of time an employee’s brain is in his inbox.”

1.1. My method of organizing email // The Helpful Hacker

https://thehelpfulhacker.net/posts/2015-01-02-my-method-of-organizing-email/

  1. Get information out of email → great tool for communication, never intended to be an information repository.
    Search is cumbersome, even if you find the email you were looking for, it takes a lot of effort to reconstruct what the train of thought was or why that email was important.
    Email doesn’t allow for meta-data so by capturing and “editorializing” the information in your own note-taking system you can add in the relevant context
  2. Practice Inbox Zero. There are really only three “states” that email should live in
    1. “New” - email that you haven’t seen yet
    2. “Actions” - something you need to do
    3. “Archive” - something you need to hang on to
  3. Here is my modified version of “Inbox Zero”
    1. 0-Action - Emails that are requests or reminders of things i need to do. If there is a specific task/deadline I will generally remove this to my “official” todo list in a different application and archive the email. Generally what is in here are reminders or items I need to do sometime.
    2. 1-Hold - Informational emails that i need close at hand but do not represent a “todo” item. This should be a temporary holding place for “favorites”. An example was a code that I needed for access to a system. I knew I’d only need it for a short amount of time so I moved the email there and then moved it to 2-Archive after a week.
    3. 2-Archive - This is where you put everything that isn’t in another folder. Storage is cheap. Save Everything. Rely on good search abilities in your mail client to retrieve anything that you haven’t deemed important enough to add to your notes. If you spend more than three minutes searching for something add it to your note-taking system for the future.
    4. 3-Feedback - This is where I keep positive (and negative) feedback to refer back to periodically.
    5. 4-Awesome - Funny emails, pick-me-ups, etc. It’s good to make time during the day to stop being so serious and enjoying work
    6. 5-Templates - If i write the same email or answer the same question more than once I create a blank email and use it as

1.2. One-Touch to Inbox Zero

1.2.1. touch each email only once

Instead of reading an email and leaving it on the inbox, process it on another tool (Jira, org-mode, etc)
The problem is you don’t really organize anything, so you scan through your inbox, idenfity several things to do, remember later, check later, etc and then do nothing about it and put it back on the same inbox (by not acting on this emails/refiling them, you are putting it back on the inbox)

1.2.2. 1. remove noise

unwanted subscriptions, noise emails (newsletter, notification list, broadcast list that are not absolutely essential)

1.2.3. 2. people use email for everything

  • communication tool
    • Use Google meet / skype / Teams
  • todo list
    • TODOs should be on Jira because they get buried by new emails, it’s difficult to search for a given task
  • project manager
    • Jira
  • notification system
  • composition tool
  • reading list
  • file storage area
    • files should be on the associated Jira issue, or in a sensible folder in OneDrive
  • reference library
  • conversation archive
    • Links to a suitable Jira issue
  • planning tool
  • note-taking app

1.2.4. 2. email is only for collecting new inputs

1.2.5. Turn off all notifications

WHY?? It seems it’s like a

1.2.6. Your inbox is someone else’s TODO list

Repeat this every time you are tempted to give anyone permission to interrupt what you’re doing, at any moment, for any reason

1.2.7. 3. Things pile up when they have nowhere to go

Setup downstream systems

1.2.7.1. Calendar

Use Outlook email calendar

1.2.7.2. Task manager

The sheer quantity of options on a given program makes it easy to put off forever with stick and paper, but paper won’t work with email and other digital messages (WHY?)

  1. Link to outlook messages on Jira, for all members of a team
1.2.7.3. Reference app

Save non-actionable stuff for later. Documentation, notes on research, important files
Jira for research on a given topic (helps you to do a given task)
Github for permanent documentation
One-Drive for important files

1.2.7.4. Read Later app

More of a personal thing, no standard imposed

1.2.8. 4. streamline your workflow

  • email is not linear
  • when you have many tasks you start to fall behind, since the rate of incoming emails is greater than the emails you can process in one day
  • even worse if you are not processing your inbox and leaving them there, since you have to manage an ever growing list of emails

1.2.9. Fifth, practice making triage decisions

1.2.10. Any system with an unchecked positive feedback loop will ultimately destroy itself

1.4. Yesterbox: The Weird Inbox Zero System From the CEO of Zappos

In short, emails are still coming in today, but he only handles email from yesterday. So at the start of every morning, he has a fixed amount of emails to answer, versus an endless flood of new emails coming in.
Once he finishes emails from yesterday, he’s done.
No new emails. No new headaches. No surprises. Just a static list of emails to answer at the start of every day, hitting Inbox Zero by noon.

Author: Julian Lopez Carballal

Created: 2024-10-21 Mon 10:13