The Relief of an Empty Inbox

Oct. 16, 2014

Many of you may have a goal to keep your inbox nearly empty, but have not succeeded at doing that. The main reason I like to keep my inbox empty is that it feels good.

Once my inbox gets larger than say 40 messages, I feel like I am losing track of what’s hanging out there undone or unattended to. Each time I empty my inbox, I feel a wave of relief that I am ahead of the game. If I am sitting at my desktop computer all day, I’ll often empty my inbox several times a day. It only takes minutes and it’s nice to feel ahead of things all day long.

The other reason to not leave mail in the inbox is you can’t tell which of your e-mails you are done with, and which e-mail needs more attention—it becomes one big mess. Then, you spend hours per week rehashing your mail, constantly re-reading things in the hope to find those things that you think you still need to take action on. That wastes a lot of time.

Easy Methods

There are easy ways to keep your inbox nearly empty. The key to all of them is to have a good task management system into which you can copy action requests that arrive by email so that you don’t need to stockpile email in the inbox for future action. The inbox is a terrible place to manage tasks; the MYN or 1MTD task system is a great place to manage tasks, so move your incoming e-mail action requests into your task system as soon as you can.

Single-folder filing is another way to make emptying the inbox simple. All my books talk about how to do that. For example, see Lesson 5 in my Outlook book.

Quick Way to Empty a Long-Overloaded Inbox

If you’re already a user of the MYN or 1MTD task system, but haven’t had time to sit down and dig out of a huge historical inbox, I have a very quick way to help you get there. It’s written up at this link, I recommend you give it a try.

Michael

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2 Responses to The Relief of an Empty Inbox

  1. Thomas says:

    HI Michael,

    I have found your books on using Outlook very helpful. Over the years, I used your methods and developed some of my own methods, too. I thought I’d share one. Which you may find too long for your blog, but for other Outlook Task geeks like me, it may be useful for them to entertain a slightly different method.

    I agree with you, that a terrible place to manage an inbox is, well, in the inbox; it is chaos at its finest. However, I also admit that I do not seek to clear out my inbox as you recommend. For me, it is just too much work to keep it clear.

    Instead, I flag e-mails only if actionable. Once flagged, they end up on my Task list. All other e-mails are either deleted or marked-as-read. Those that have been read remain in the inbox for possible future reference. (Sometimes those go into custom folders for significant issues or projects.) This method reduces the number of clicks and conversions to tasks needed. I’ve modified your method and created my own. Of course, every method and tweak have their advantages and disadvantages. Mine works like this.

    I simply flag e-mails that need action. I do not try to “clear out” my inbox. I just either flag a message or convert them to a task; delete them; or I leave them un-flagged (because they may need to be referenced later). This helps me spend more time in my Task list view because I’ve set up my Task list to see items that have been flagged but not categorized; it shows up in the “uncategorized” category at the top of my Task list. (Those who have messed with grouping categories will understand what I’m describing.) The Task list becomes my real inbox. I spend very little time in my e-mail inbox because I only read, flag, or delete e-mails. I do not clear my inbox.

    Again, this enables me to spend less time in my inbox and more time in Task list. I then either date the flag, categorize, and/or convert e-mails to tasks to if necessary (I do not always convert e-mails into tasks unless the “clarification of action” is truly needed. I’ve found that converting e-mails where the action needed is obvious is not needed. I just categorize the action needed).

    Now, to obtain the “feeling” of a cleared out inbox, I use Outlook’s “Unread” view button at the top of the inbox (in Outlook 2013), which has enabled me to deal with unread items just once (earlier versions of Outlook need a view created by the user obtain the same effect). Using the “Unread” tool/view can give one the “feeling” that they’ve cleared out their inbox, quickly because it only shows e-mails that have been not read.

    I think that this modified method is worth a try for those who find it too much work to try and clear out the inbox. Again, either method has its advantages and disadvantages. Each person needs to figure out what works for them.

    As I said earlier, Michael, I know this is different from what you recommend regarding the inbox. I do think your method is great. But I thought I’d share a slightly different method that may benefit some of your audience who feel buried in processing huge amounts of e-mails and tasks.

    Of course, there are some other modifications I’ve made to my Outlook Task views to make this works so you may not want to publish this. You may edit this as you see fit for clarity. It’s kind of be complex for the average user, but to those who like this kind of stuff, they may like hearing about. I’m glad to offer you further clarification on what I do if you find it of value. I’m sure you’ve had others who do similar things as this. I started using my modified method this in an attempt to dramatically reduce the number of clicks I do in Outlook and still obtain a clear view everything in a way that would be timely and useful.

    Cheers,

    Thomas

  2. Adam says:

    Hi Michael,
    Unlike you I have hundreds of mails in my inbox folder because I keep my important mails with some information like stored passwords of other online accounts and such. Also I keep all of my PayPal’s confirmations of payment emails of something goes wrong so I can verify I payed something etc.

    My email inbox is some kind of archive of my personal information inside. Maybe it’s not good idea to keep all of this there because if my account get hacked then a hacker will have all this info in his hand, but I take care of it’s security, for now it’s good.

    I thought everyone keeps important mails in their inbox like me, now it’s surprising how some of you can’t see a even one message to stay there for a while 🙂

    Maybe I’ll clean my inbox once when I catch some time. It will take me whole day haha 🙂

    Thanks for your share and tips!

    Regards,
    Adam

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