When Inbox Zero Sends You Running For Cover

I’ve known several people recently that gathered up their courage and made the big scary leap to Inbox Zero by archiving all their emails. Thousands of messages, years of email, piles of procrastination, delayed decisions and regret – all removed in a single click.

Once it is done, relief! What a wonderful feeling to have no nagging messages in your inbox. But… once you’ve made the leap, how do you keep the emails from accumulating again? How to actually maintain Inbox Zero? Don’t run away, here’s what to do.

No More Email Fondling

A professional organizer once said “clutter is just an accumulation of delayed decisions.” No where is this more true than the Inbox. A typical email handling scenario for most people goes something like this:

• an email comes in
• you open the email
• you read the email
• you go on to the next email or do something related to the email
• you get distracted by something else
• a new email comes in
• the cycle repeats

I like to call this email fondling. Because, well, that’s exactly what it is. You read the same emails over and over again, never actually doing anything with them, just reviewing them to no actionable end. Plus, no one likes the sound of that term, which I think is helpful in getting people, especially business owners, to quit doing it.

Do You Work in the Mailroom or the C-Suite?

One of my favorite visual ways to guilt people into improving their email habits is to talk about an “old-school” office. You know the one, where the CEO has a lovely office up on the top floor and spends all day working on the business.

You can picture it – a statuesque figure at an elaborate desk reviewing financial documents, making deals and planning meetings. Down on the ground-floor of the office is the mail room.

Once a day the mail is received, processed and only the most important communications make their way to the desk of the CEO. Makes sense right? The CEO should be focused on running and growing the company, and not looking at every piece of mail that comes into the office.

Now, let’s talk about how entrepreneurs and business owners fit into this analogy. Yes, they are CEOs. Yes, they should be working on their business. But, instead, they are anxiously waiting outside by the curb at the mailbox, furiously checking to see if something has arrived, waiting for the mail truck, reviewing every piece of mail that comes in.

Yup, that’s you if you leave your inbox open all day and let incoming email command your attention. You are spending your time on something that has zero value-add for your business. Can you please go back to your top-floor office?

1-Touch Email Processing

The one thing that will enable you to maintain an empty Inbox, and spend more time in your top-floor office, is getting into the habit of “1-touch” processing through your inbox. This is a very different activity than the previously discussed process. It requires separating processing of emails from performing actions prompted by the emails.

Here’s what 1-touch processing looks like:

• Go into your email at only set times per day (no notifications, no leaving email open all the time)
• Open the email
• Read the email
• Decide what needs to happen
• Either reply (if it is less than 2 minutes) or put it in the appropriate place
• Archive the email if your replied (once you have opened an email, it should not remain in your inbox.)
• If there’s something you need to check back on, you can try using the “snooze” feature of Streak (Boomerang and Yesware have similar functionality). You can select when it shows back up in your Inbox that way.
• If it is something you need to do, put that task on your to-do list and then you can file the email in “waiting for action” or just archive it. When you complete the task, that will be your cue to respond.

Personally, I use the Gmail Lab Multiple Inboxes view that allows me to have my Gmail home display not only my inbox, but also other folders underneath it. I do 1-touch processing of my inbox and use stars for items that need a longer-than-2-minute response. I’m also a huge fan of Streak for delayed sending and snippets. Inbox Pause is another handy Chrome extension that allows me to pause incoming emails when I do occasionally need to be accessing information in my email for a project I’m working on.

As Always, Easier Said Than Done

I get it, email fondling is a hard habit to break. But I think you’ll agree it isn’t serving you. It isn’t the most value-add use of your time. And, you could be so much more valuable, to your business and your clients, if you change just this one process.

You’ll have to work to figure out what your system is, but the key is to not delay a decision. That’s what leads to inbox accumulation.

What tips, tricks and tools do you use to keep a tidy inbox? I’d love to hear them in the comments.