The problem with email inbox zero

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Summary

Inbox zero is not the goal. It’s the result of processing email properly. You read, delegate, or deal with each email, then put it in the right place. If you don’t, the inbox gets overwhelming and it dominoes into the next day. Keeping your tools organised means you can get work done without friction.

Raw

Earlier today, I tweeted my email app, which is Apple Mail, and basically saying, I’ve pretty much done everything, and it’s not even 12 o’clock.

Now, one of my followers on Twitter replied, and he basically said, I’m just reading it now, the focus isn’t an empty inbox goal. Totally true.

And I think where I’ve made the mistake is posting my email. email inbox and saying, you know, this is, you can do this. And you can do it. But that’s not the goal, which is rightly so, which is what he said.

The goal is to make sure that you actually do the things in your inbox, but put them in the right places. What I replied was having, I mean, I had a great conversation, having a, having a bunch of emails, you have basically have to put them in the right places. So you read it, you delegate it, you deal with it. They’re basically the three things that you need to do with email that comes in.

I’ve talked about this before. Email comes in, you deal with it and get it out of your inbox. So having inbox zero isn’t the goal. Having it look nice isn’t really the goal. And again, my mistake is not explaining it more. The point is to when the email comes in, to put it into the right place, so your email does look nice, right, your email app.

So you’re not constantly concentrating on, oh, I have to deal with that thing in my inbox, going into your inbox and then seeing a ton of emails, a ton of things, and then getting overwhelmed and not getting anything done. So email comes in, you read it, you delegate it, you deal with it, you put it in the right place, etc. So it can be done.

I’ve done it for years. There are many people like David, who, is on Twitter following me. He also does the same thing. There are many people that do do this. Where it goes wrong, I think, it’s not necessarily how using the wrong email app or using the wrong system. Again, like I said yesterday, I don’t like systems. It’s making sure that you get everything done in the right time frame, right?

So eight hours a day. I still believe you don’t need to work at eight hours a day. 40% of that is fluff. I’ve spoken about this before. So you’ve got the rest of the day to actually get your work done. But if your tools are not ready and your email comes in and it’s all full, you get overwhelmed and it goes over to the next day and you get overwhelmed the next day, et cetera, et cetera.

So it’s kind of like a domino effect if you don’t have things organised and sorted. So back to the original thing, email inbox zero is awesome. but don’t think it’s an aesthetic thing. It’s more to do with a, I have the right workflows, hence my, I have inbox zero.

Hopefully that cleared things up. I’ll put a link to the tweet down below. You can go and read the rest of it. And as always, keep it simple, and I’ll see you in the next one. Ciao.