Dear Friend/Stranger,
These past few weeks, I’ve been getting on top of my inboxes. I’m on the other side now, living at inbox 5 (meaning 5 emails or less in each inbox), and ready to share how I did it. Once things are broken down, they’re a lot less daunting.
Here’s how declutter your inbox:
Schedule email times
I started with one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening. Granted, I started that week between Christmas and the New Year, when time almost pauses. If you can’t devote quite so much time, you can still make big progress. Note that these time blocks aren’t just spent looking through email. You also use this time to do the tasks necessary to allow your to delete an email or never receive one like it again.
Start Anywhere
The top of the inbox, the bottom, somewhere in the middle, or a different place every time. There are 3 categories of email:
- Junk.
2. Informative emails.
3. Task oriented emails
Open each email. Ask: Is this junk, information, or to do?
Junk Emails
Junk is pretty recognizable. This include spam as well as ads and other emails that you don’t really need in your life. The only question to ask about this type of email is: Can I Unsubscribe to prevent more of the same from coming in? If yes, take a moment to unsubscribe before you delete. If it’s Spam, or the sender’s email address is overly long or not from who the email says it’s from, don’t bother unsubscribing, and just delete these.
Information Emails
If it’s info, ask yourself: Do I need to keep this? If no, delete. If yes, decide where to keep it. I have 6 email folders in email program: Receipts/Tax, Family History, From Family & Friends, House Files, Online Accounts, Work. You may need different files. As you move through your info emails, categories will begin to appear.
To do (task oriented)
Let’s first focus on the most cluttering type of task email:
newsletters and causes
The inbox is best reserved for unique emails, not recurring ones that arrive on a schedule. Often, emails from our favorite causes pile up for years. How much time and energy can you or I devote to a cause whose messages have been piling up for months or years? You are more likely to find the space and time to participate when you’re no longer overwhelmed by your inbox. To get on top of your inbox, you must unsubscribe from everything, even things you care a lot about. When your inbox is tidy, you will have the mental clarity to truly contribute. You will go to the website for your pet cause and take other, possibly in person actions, outside of your inbox. Social media is a good place to receive regular updates, but the email inbox is not.
When you encounter a newsletter:
- First, unsubscribe.
- Copy the sender address.
- Paste this in the email search bar
- Delete all the emails from this sender. There may be pages and pages of newsletter emails to delete!
Other Task Prompting Emails
When you open an email that ask you to do something, ask yourself: am I going to do this? If yes, you have 3 options:
- Do it now, during your email hour, then delete it.
- Add the task to your calendar and delete the email.
- Add the task to your to do list and delete the email. Never add tasks that will take less than half an hour to your to do list. Just take care of these during email time.
Getting Close to Inbox 5, or whatever
After a few weeks of AM and PM email hours, your inbox will begin to clear out. When you reach only 100, then 20 emails, it’s downright exciting. This adds to the motivation to address those final emails that feel the hardest to tackle.
I personally find inbox 0 impractical. I aim for inbox 5. If you have a certain kind of job, maintaining 20 emails in your inbox may be more realistic. The objective is to pick a number, and use your email hour to stay at or under it. That’s right, you can now graduate to one email hour. This doesn’t mean that you can’t check your email through the day, as you may need to for work. The objective is to have a set time each day to make sure you maintain your mailbox. You may not need to spend the full hour on your inbox either. I personally combined my email and social media hour, and I set my Task Timer for each, so I don’t get lost online, and I get back to my real life.