"0 incoming" - a clear system for maintaining zero inbox

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

By reading this article, you will become the king of emails. Honestly.

For many, e-mail is still an uncontested working tool and daily suffering. Someone has seven incoming letters, and he will quickly sort them out now. Someone has 46 incoming, but he will also rake them in a day, because he is used to it. For each person, there is a certain threshold for the number of incoming emails per day, which he can cope with without delaying processing for the next day and, accordingly, without creating blockages in the e-mail box. You can call this threshold "natural".

If there are more letters than a person can process, then you need to change your approach to email management. This will increase the threshold to the value required in a particular case. Need to manage 100 emails a day? This means you can do 100, just use the correct methodology when working with mail. Which one? Let's tell you now.

The only indicator that a person can handle mail is zero incoming mail at the end of the working day. The key principle of competent processing of incoming messages is understanding what kind of letter is in front of you. First you need to learn how to clearly classify letters and know what to do with each type.

All incoming emails can be divided into seven categories:

1. You don't have to answer, you don't have to read. There are two ways for such letters: archive or delete. If you receive another newsletter that you never read, then do yourself a favor - unsubscribe. One action in exchange for getting rid of dozens of such emails in the future. We want to learn how to cope with the flow of letters in a day? Less flow is easier to handle. Don't be afraid to miss out on something important. Really necessary information will get to you in a different way and will pop up in front of you at least one more time.
2. With attached files. These can be notifications about the need to pay for something or information for current or future work. It is useful to create separate folders for such letters, but without fanaticism. Too many folders? Simplify. In order to find something you need later, you need not a thousand folders, but the ability to use the mailer's search functions.
3. Answer at will. The answer seems to be optional, but sometimes courtesy is helpful. Here, act exclusively according to the situation.
4. With a margin of time for familiarization. Interesting to read, but not necessary. Try to categorize as many emails as possible in this and the previous category. This is the key to effective mail handling.
5. I need to answer today. Everything is simple here: take and answer either now, if something is very urgent, or at the end of the working day.
6. I have to answer, but not today. The beauty of email is that it is not a chat or a phone. No one expects and should not expect a prompt response by email, if this is not stated in the header of the letter. If a certain day is named as a deadline for a response, or you yourself know and understand how long you need to give an answer, then place such letters in the appropriate folder. For example, "Reply on Monday," "Reply on Tuesday," and so on. Now create yourself a checklist, which contains the item "In the morning, process mail postponed for today." There are also specialized automation tools for such purposes: for Gmail, and.
7. Incomprehensible letter. There are letters that are difficult to categorize. Do not torment yourself with reflections and agree with yourself to classify such letters in one of the categories listed above.

Based on this classification, we need folders for categories 2, 3, 4 and 6.

Rules for Effective Email Processing

• Set aside 30 minutes at the end of your workday to bring your inbox to zero. This is more effective than trying to instantly respond to every email. People don't multitask. Less distractions and switching, more efficiency.
• What to do with urgent emails? Set yourself an interval at which you check your inbox throughout the day. For example, once an hour. Check your inbox for urgent important emails and, if there are none, go back to work. Remember the advantage of mail: it is not a means of instant communication. It is possible that the problem mentioned in one of the non-urgent emails will be solved without your participation by the end of the day, or by the end of the day you will receive more information, which will allow you to solve the problem faster and more efficiently.
• Whenever you are not checking your mail, keep the mailer closed. Turn off notifications. Save yourself the distracting contemplation of the number of incoming letters. Now you have another job, and the time for mail has not yet come. In moments of doubt about the correctness of this approach, remember: you are not at a nuclear power plant, but even if you were there, you would not have been informed about the reactor overheating anyway by email.
• Use your urge to finish your work day on time to speed up mail processing. That is why it is recommended to disassemble the inbox to zero at the end of the day. You have 30 minutes and you want to get it over with quickly. Basically, it turns out to be a kind of game, but you can also purposefully gamify the processing of email.
• Be short and to the point.
• Be positive and friendly. Emails can build and destroy relationships. Instead of solving really important issues, people sometimes slip into attempts to call the opponent an idiot as delicately and covertly as possible, and the whole text is based on this. There is nothing strange in expressing your positive attitude to the addressee with a small pleasant phrase in the body of the letter. Your friendliness will return to you, and your correspondence will become much more meaningful and effective.
• You need to rake letters in the reverse order. And only so. It seems that it is more logical to start with older letters, but our goal is zero inbox, which means that by the end of the working day we will even get to the very first letter we receive. If you indulge yourself and start leaving the last letters you received today for tomorrow, then the whole technique stops working. Why would you want to learn good mailing at all if you don't follow a fundamental rule? Keep working as before and suffer.
• Open only the letters you need, sending the rest to the archive or for deletion. We overuse subscriptions to unnecessary things (a subscription to Lifehacker, on the contrary, is very necessary) and as a result we get more information than we can read. How to distinguish the letters you want? There is one simple, but very effective rule: open only those letters that are addressed to a specific person personally to you. The rest - in one of the categories described at the beginning of the article according to the situation.
• Create templates. Often, the responses to emails are pretty standard, that is, you write the same thing. Have you noticed that you write this phrase often? Make a template for quick copy-paste or create it in the mail service itself.
• If the mail has been processed, and there is still time, then you need to use it rationally. We go to the category of letters number 3, 4 and 6 and put things in order there.

This tutorial, which is based on correct sorting, as you can see, is a great addition to the more general email tips from LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner. Also, don't miss Leo Babauta's 10 email tips. In fact, there are many additional ways to get the most out of your email. Try the techniques that apply to you, analyze the results, and do not forget to leave in the comments your own tips for improving the efficiency of working with e-mail.