My experiment with Inbox Zero so far

I never thought I will be the kind of guy who will talk about “Inbox Zero” but ever since I started implementing it in December, I am able to find more joy in my inbox.

I wouldn’t believe it too. I no longer have this tiny little dose of stress when I open my inbox, knowing that I have a lot of things I have to go through or respond, to and knowing that it doesn’t feel like I have it under control. But it feels different now.

Here are the main sections I split into my inbox:

1. Action Items: these are emails that I need to do some action on. Whether it’s responding to someone, downloading something, or even completing a task relating to it, it will sit in this section until I complete it
2. Awaiting reply: I use a special BCC automation within Gmail to trigger this, but whenever I send an email that needs something to do something to, I will include a special myemail+waiting@gmail.com and it will sit in there until I finally get a response
3. Read through: this is kind of my catch-all for everything that I may find interesting in reading. This is where a lot of newsletters will end up falling into, but the key is making them read and archived automatically, so I never feel the pressure of having to keep them in my permanent “backlog” to get to

If you’re considering doing “inbox zero”, I highly recommend starting. It feels like it frees my mind up to do more things that I enjoy. Onwards!