Would you like to get your email inbox down to zero by the end of each day? I didn’t know such a thing was possible. You may wonder, “Inbox zero? What magic is this?”
Tall Tartan Talks here … I have discovered a non-fiction business book called Productivity Ninja by Graham Allcott.
One particular chapter which struck me immediately was about managing your emails. His strategies were revolutionary for me. This blog post is a review of that chapter.
I was one of those people who had over 200 emails in each of my three inboxes. I sorted them occasionally. They were mainly newsletters I subscibe to. Inevitably, if I include my smartphone, I was prone to checking them far too often. But the important emails got lost too easily.
Scrolling through social media didn’t help my efficiency either.
Cluttered inbox
I starred or flagged some important or urgent emails for easy reference, but my inbox was becoming unmanageable. My professional email, annie@proofnow.co.uk was the fullest.
Then I found, in his chapter Ninja Email Processing, where Graham says, “Be a Ninja – take a ruthless approach to emails!” Now I adopt his strategy daily.
Interested? This is how you do it.
Reduce your inbox to zero daily
The bare bones of how to get started are:
- Open emails
- Create three new files: Action, Read, Waiting
- Scan the first couple of lines of each email. If it needs to be dealt with by you immediately, move it into Action. If it isn’t important, move it to Read. If you are waiting for someone else to action, move it to Waiting.
I used to look at my growing email notifications, groan inwardly, feel fear and overwhelm, avoid then stress about what might be in my inbox. When I was waiting for a particular email from a client, I would pause a job whenever a notification sounded, whether that job was proofreading, or tuition preparation. I had to check then and there who it was from, especially if I was expecting an email.
Stop!
Graham suggests that the problem needs to be viewed in a different way: your email inbox is just where your emails land; don’t check your emails, process your emails; and don’t let your emails nag you all day.
Strategy
Firstly, look at your inbox as a landing page, not a to-do list. We tend to keep the emails in that inbox so we don’t lose them. The answer? New folders need to be created to hold actionable emails, and those emails which can be deferred.
Secondly, restrict checking emails to, at most, three times a day.
- First thing in the morning, or 9am (or whenever your business day starts).
- Second around 4:30pm to give you 30 minutes of reducing your email list to zero. Or later, if you don’t stop on the dot of 5pm.
- Third, you may also want to check emails at lunchtime.
Me? … I am slowly weaning myself off reading of emails after 8pm … in an attempt to maintain work boundaries. The same goes for checking social media or message channels. (My excuse is that some of my editor colleagues are in a different time zone.)
How to process (not check) emails:
- Scan the first email for a couple of seconds. Don’t hang about. Ask yourself, is it vital I action this? If yes, move it to Action.
- Scan the next email. If someone is acknowledging they will action something you have delegated, move it to Waiting. This guarantees that you will have a reminder to follow this up.
- If the next email is something not at all urgent but for perusing, say, a subscription which you want to read at your leisure, move it to Read. Don’t start reading it now.
- Repeat steps 1–3.
- By the end of 30 minutes, there should be zero emails in your inbox.
- Repeat three times a day.
Subject folders
You may be like me and organise your emails into many subject, client-baased, or archive folders. Again, this can get out of hand. My next job is to whittle those down to more efficient labels. So that when I have gone through my burgeoning Read folder, I will move each email to a re-named folder, or delete it.
Graham’s theory is that if you have only three folders to move the incoming emails into, it makes decision-making and sorting much easier. Agonising will be reduced to a manageable level.
If, say after a week, you look in the Read folder and email subject is no longer current or valid, then delete it. Or move it to an archive folder.
One of Graham’s tips is to think of a set of Ds: Decide, Do, Delegate, Defer, Delete.
Cut the dead wood
Perhaps you subscribe to newsletters by email. For example, if you follow particular people for their business or subject knowledge … There are many out there. It may be time to review them and prune who you subscribe to.
Try subscribing to one for six months. Count how many of their newsletters you actually read (and follow the advice suggested) in those six months. Be honest. Be brutal. Cut out the dead wood and unsubscribe if the answer is only one or two. That is one way to reduce the number of emails you get.
If you are successful with this method, you have more control over those incoming emails.
Information overload
Information overload is a threat to our productivity, so I recommend Graham’s book if you want to be proactive about reducing that overload. By managing your emails – and your time, by procrastinating less – you can focus on your priorities.
I look forward to finishing Graham’s book. Guess what? I have signed up for his newsletter. Oh the irony!
There you have it. If you learnt something from this post, head over to my Blog page.
Author background: Graham Allcott
Founder of Think Productive (@thinkproductive), Graham Allcott is an entrepreneur, author, speaker and podcaster, offering coaching strategies for business and time management. He is host of the podcast Beyond Busy. His book was first published by Icon Books in 2014, and totally revised in 2019 because of the advances in technology.
Other great chapters in Graham’s book include:
- The Organize Habit
- The Review Habit
- The Do Habit
- Stop Messing About on Your Phone.