Empty Your Email Inbox For Good!
I confess. I am one of those people that is driven crazy by notifications. I hate that little badge on my phone telling me I have to take care of something. Due to that little crazy thing about me, I used to feel like I was always trying to keep the email number down. Sometimes it just felt out of control!
Fast forward to today. I end my day with 10 or less emails in my inbox. Every day. Sometimes it’s completely empty! I have several reasons this works really well for me.
When I open my inbox I know exactly what I need to do. If it’s my work email, I know I’m only working with those emails in my general inbox. If it’s my personal email, I know I only need to address the things that are hanging out there.
It’s less stressful! I know what I need to do and I can find things pretty quickly.
Let’s get started.
DELETE
If you are starting out with an email address you have had for years, you likely have thousands of emails in your inbox. Even if they are all read, there are so many backed up there. You have 2 options here. You can declare inbox bankruptcy and delete them all or you can start from the end and delete them that way.
I wish I would have documented how many emails I had when I started this. There were thousands for sure! And let me warn you, this is a tedious process. It took me a little while to work through it all.
FOLDERS
So what do you do when you come across an email you want to keep? This is where folders come in. I personally have gmail and use it in my iPhone app and in my MacBook Mail app. But any email that you use should have folders. I have folders saved for various things. Here are some sample folders I use:
Recipes
Committee (this isn’t the actual name, but I work on a committee and save anything I might need to go back to here.)
Kids - I have one for each of my kids - this might include correspondence for their school or info regarding something they are involved in.
Travel - I keep any emails regarding upcoming travel here.
I have quite a few other folders that are specific to things I personally need. If you come across an email you need to save and don’t have a folder that it fits, create a folder for that. Be careful to not just stick everything in a folder. Many emails just need to be deleted.
UNSUBSCRIBE
This feature has become my best friend over the last year. I highly recommend signing up for a free service like unroll.me. This brings all the emails I want to subscribe to, but don’t want flooding my inbox, in one place. However, that’s not my favorite feature. When you sign up for this, it searches your inbox and history for all email addresses you regularly get emails from. It gives you 3 choices:
Keep in inbox - this is for something important that you need to see as soon as it hits your inbox.
Rollup - these are for all emails you want to get in that one single rollup email each morning.
Unsubscribe - THIS. This is my favorite feature. I have unsubscribed from 704 emails to date through this service. It’s so refreshing to not get flooded with all the junk. This app makes it so simple to unsubscribe.
Why do I think you should unsubscribe from just about all your store emails? If it’s something like an ad from Old Navy you might think, “but what if I want to know when there is a big sale?” This is where my minimalistic lifestyle comes in. I no longer shop based on sales. I will check in on these stores at the beginning of the season (there is always a sale!) and I don’t need the email for that. If I sign in to my gap.com account, the coupons automatically populate on the bottom of my screen. I don’t need to daily be reminded to shop. I imagine this has saved me quite a bit of money with removing any impulse purchase temptations. Also, did you know that some of these stores send you up to 10 emails a day? It’s quite insane. Try unsubscribing. I think you’ll like it!
The benefits of unsubscribing mostly impact my personal email address. Now what about your work email? This is where folders have helped me so much. I have one folder marked “COMPLETED.” Yes, I have it in all caps. When I have fully answered the questions of a client and I’m just waiting on their response, I’ll move it over here. When they respond, all of the previous emails will still be there, attached to that thread. Worst case scenario, I can search for them and find the email if I need it beforehand. This means that each morning when I open my work email, I know that the only things I need to immediately address are hanging out in the inbox. This has really helped my productivity and kept things from getting lost in the shuffle.
Bringing your inbox to zero is such a beautiful thing! Getting it there might take you some time, but keeping it there is easy. This has made a great impact in my own productivity and I believe it will for you too!