HOW TO ACHIEVE INBOX ZERO IN FIVE EASY STEPS By Julia Doherty www.green-umbrella.biz
HOW TO ACHIEVE INBOX ZERO IN FIVE EASY STEPS I have now been implementing an inbox zero tactic since 2013. After reading David Allen s book called Getting Things Done - The art of stressfree productivity, I can honestly say that this has completely changed my life.
THE PAIN 200+ emails a day! My inbox was like my to do list. I would leave emails in my inbox until I had time to deal with them, and my list would get longer and longer. My emails were constantly going ping, ping, ping throughout the day. I would be checking emails while in the queue for my lunch and even when consuming my sandwich! I have tried numerous tactics to deal with email. I remember setting up rules (but then I would forget to check the folders and would miss important emails.) If this sounds like you, then I urge you to read on as I now have a secret formula that has worked wonders for me. It takes a while to set up, but it is worth the initial pain. THE MINDSET You will not only need to change your mindset towards email and develop a new habit, but you will also need to start to the process of educating other people as to how you will now be dealing with their emails going forward. You need to remember that your inbox does not set your agenda for the day; it is the other way round! (That took me a while to get used to). BEFORE YOU START SET ASIDE SOME TIME AND REGISTER WITH NUDGEMAIL.COM If you are going to do this, then please allow at least one hour completely dedicated to sorting out your inbox! (Saying that, it took me about 3 hours as I had over 2000 emails in my inbox, which was not a good starting place!). Your next step is to register with a free service called Nudgemail.com. Stop clogging your inbox with simple to-do s. Use Nudgemail and we ll remind you about that important thing later. Believe me, this neat little tool will be your knight in shining armour!
STEP 1 SET UP THREE FOLDERS If you are using MS Outlook, Mac Mail or any other mailbox, your software will allow you to set up some folders. So here are the three folders that I have set up: 1. File 2. Read 3. Hold STEP 2 UNSUBSCRIBE, UNSUBSCRIBE, UNSUBSCRIBE The next step is to work through your inbox and unsubscribe to any of those emails that you never read, and you continually click delete! I had loads from various Linkedin groups, wowcher, Groupon, and other things that I had signed up for over the years. I am now in the habit of unsubscribing to things, rather than just clicking delete when I get a spammy email arrive in my inbox that is not welcome. I am now going to assume that the remaining emails that you subscribe too are going to be news articles or blog articles that you can read at a later stage.
Therefore you now have two options:- 1. Set up a new rule for all of your subscriptions emails to be sent to your read folder OR 2. You can use the new Hootlet Synchronization Extension, and have all RSS feeds directed to there so that they do not even touch your email. (Here is the video from Hootsuite to explain what I mean) STEP 3 IMMEDIATELY IMPLEMENT THE 2 MIN GOLDEN RULE This is the part of the process that makes complete sense to me. The golden rule is, if answering the email is going to take you more than two mins to reply, then you need to move it to one of your three folders, or nudge it to a date in the future: 1. Action If an email is going to take more than two mins to respond, then you need to nudge it. I tend to use specific dates ie: 7122015@nudgemail.com (if I do not need to action the email until a specific date), or send it to Thursday@nudgemail.com (example). If you need to action it later that day then you can send it to 2hrs@nudgemail.com and it will reappear in your inbox 2hrs later. Remove the clutter. If you keep seeing that email that you need to action in your inbox then you are taking up valuable headspace. Out of site is out of mind! 2. File emails that need to be kept, but filed elsewhere. 3. Read perhaps it s a long email that needs your attention, or it is an email that is of interest to you but you can easily read it and reply later. 4. Hold Sometimes you are waiting for a response from someone before you can reply.
STEP 4 TURN YOUR EMAILS OFF Easily said than done, but it is achievable. I check my emails once every hour, and then immediately turn them off once I have actioned them and have a clear inbox. I do not have email notifications pinging in the corner as this distraction is highly unproductive. So please turn these notifications off. You don t need them. If the email is urgent, then the person in question will pick up the phone or contact you in another way. This is the start of the education process for your clients and works colleagues. Talking of notifications, this is the point that you also need to turn off notifications on your phone. You know what it s like your phone is sitting on your desk, and you hear the ping then you see the little red dot appear. What is it about those little red dots that makes us drop everything? We become like someone possessed, and we have to clear the red dots to make the world a better place! Turn your notifications off right now. Do NOT progress onto the next steps until you have turned emails off!
STEP 5 CLEAR YOUR FOLDERS EACH DAY This is part of my morning routine now. It is too easy to have a clear inbox and then lots of full folders. Over the years, I became lazy and left emails to stack up in my folders. Out of sight is out of mind. This has led me to a fair amount of trouble in the past, and I also missed a deadline for a very important tender (as it was sat in my read folder rather than my to do folder). The default for Nudgemails to arrive in your inbox is 6.30am. I am an early bird and I like to prepare for the day, so I have changed mine to 5am. FINAL TIP: AN APP TO HELP DEVELOP A HABIT The final action that I needed to do to make sure that the above actions became a habit, not just a fad, was to register with an iphone app called Coach.me. Coach. Me (previously known as the lift app) is a fabulous app that encourages you to gain a new habit, and I know that this was crucial to my success. How do you manage your emails? Are they a bottomless pit or do you have them completely under control?