This past week I was on a call with a client. We were working to set up their email inbox and help them get even more organized. We’ve all been there and heard about the plethora of time spent in email and how it’s a waste of time…. But there are important things in there right?
Managing communication within a company (internal) or outside of a company with clients, vendors, etc. can be super time consuming. In this blog post I’m going to give you exactly what I showed this client.
Since I was in the mortgage industry over a decade ago, I learned that I could actually use my inbox as a pseudo ‘todo’ list, and I’ll show you exactly how that works. This idea has saved me countless hours and actually helped my ADHD brain not forget things, or let things go into the blackhole of the inbox abyss to be forgotten in perpetuity.
What’s the big idea?
INBOX 0
Inbox 0 means getting to the point where you have 0 emails in your inbox by the end of the day, every day. The main thing is that, if it’s in there, it means there is something that needs to be done.
In my workflow, I generally check my email twice each day. Once in the morning, and once in the evening. Everytime I see an email I’m thinking of whether I need to do one of 4 things.
Introducing The 4 D’s
- Do it NOW
- Delegate it
- Delay it
- Dump it
DO IT NOW
These are the urgent and important things that need to be replied to right now. (or today) and you would generally add them to your todo list or however you manage your tasks for that day. The important thing is you leave it in your inbox until whatever it is that you have to do is done.
DELEGATE IT
If it’s something that needs to be delegated, forward it on to the next person, or put it in your project management system and set yourself a reminder to followup on that thing. If you use gmail, this is where I use the ‘snooze’ feature. This feature allows me to reply to the email, and then ‘snooze’ it for a set amount of time so it comes back to my inbox when I’m ready to follow up with it.
DELAY IT
This is for anything that is not urgent and you want to revisit on another day. Again, I’ll use the snooze feature in my inbox to have it come back on the day and time that I want to see it.
DUMP IT
For the dumping, this is either deleting/archiving the email, or filing it away. Whether you’re in outlook or gmail, you have the ability to set up folders and automatically move things from your inbox to those folders from certain recipients. If it’s something that always gets dumped, consider setting up a filter for those emails so they don’t go away completely, but they don’t pester you when you’re in focused meetings or times.
But isn’t this a waste of time? I get so much junk in my email inbox?
I got feedback on a Facebook post I put out regarding this blog that “it’s just an incredible waste of time that I could be using for much more productive tasks”, and I dont’ disagree. eMail can be one of the most unproductive things you can do with your time, but it also can be a superpower.
They say that 30 minutes of preparation can save 300 minutes of work, and that’s how I feel about this. It may take a few hours or a few weeks to get your inbox humming the way you want it to, and to clear out all those unread messages and distractions, but those few hours will save you hundreds of hours in the long run.
I mentioned a few tools above that are pivotal to making this work.
Snooze
If the email in your inbox isn’t something you want to deal with right now, or if its something you know you need to follow up on another day, hit the snooze button. Boom, it’s gone until you decide you want it.
Archive
Archiving an email in Gmail means it’s still searchable, so it doesn’t go away, it’s just something you were informed about or needed to see, and are finished with. It doesn’t take much time.
Gmail Tabs
In Gmail, you have the ability to set up tabs in your inbox for your primary inbox, social, promotions, and updates. All you have to do is drag an email from one tab to another and a helpful little popup will come up saying ‘do you want to do this with all emails like this?’ – Well yes, yes I do.
So if something is in updates that you know is important, and you want it to hit your inbox every time, just drag it over and save yourself the time of setting up a filter.
Or if something lands in your inbox that should be in promotions or updates, just drag it over and it won’t land there anymore.
[unfortunately outlook users, you don’t have this feature]
Filters & Folders
For those ‘special’ messages that you know you want to see, but don’t need to be in the inbox (or do need to be in the inbox) you have filters and folders. You can set up a search rule such as ‘From:” or “Subject Line:” and filter all messages with that search criteria. You could Star every email, or move it into a folder/label, mark it as read or unread automatically. The sky’s the limit but you can set up a filter for any messages that are not urgent (or are urgent) on a case by case basis.
Don’t let anything slip through the cracks!
As another respondent to my Facebook inquiry put it “It’s the mark of a true systems master. Plus that means nothing slips through the cracks.”.
This is why I swear by inbox 0 for my workflow. Nothing can ever slip through the cracks in your inbox. This will make you a better employee, boss, leader, customer service representative, etc.
It’s either in your inbox and something needs to be done, or it’s not in your inbox and you can forget about it.
