I am attempting to practice a new habit when managing my email: not having things stack up. As I write this article, my Gmail inbox sits with zero messages in it. I find that my head is much clearer with just that one thing in place. So, how can you go about getting your inbox down to zero?

In this article, I will outline my personal advice for doing so. This goal has been covered on other sites, but I’ll make some recommendations that I have learned from personal experience.

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What Is The Inbox?

First of all, what is your email inbox?

For most people, it becomes a colossal collection of to-do items that just collect up. Perhaps the email contains some information you want to hold onto. Perhaps it is something you need to do, but it’ll take some time and you procrastinate. Perhaps it is information having to do with something which is in progress. No matter what it is, the end result is the same: an email inbox which is overloaded with messages. Sometimes into the hundreds or even thousands.

But, what should the inbox be? It should be just that – an INbox. It is where new, unread messages stack up. The moment you read the message, it should be removed from the inbox.

It isn’t so hard to do that if you use a little organization and have some other tools to help you out.

Create Systems

I personally make use of some other tools. I no longer use my inbox as a place to archive information I may need later. I am using Gmail, so I may archive an email so that I can later pull it up by search. But, this is usually only for backup purposes and I keep the information elsewhere.

Here is how I would handle certain types of emails:

• Information Only. Read it, then delete it. If I need to reference it later, I will put the information into Evernote.
• Social Media Notifications. Usually, just delete. If it is a Twitter notification of a new follower, I filter them into a separate folder and then, every few days, go and process those emails, decide whether to follow back, and delete.
• Email Containing a Quick To Do. If the todo item can be taken care of very quickly, I’ll do it right then and there. Then, delete.
• Email With a more Involved To Do. Copy The Info To Evernote, Label as “Action Needed” in Gmail. Set up the todo item in OmniFocus. Then Archive.
• Email Containing Time-Specific Information. Put it in Google Calendar.

The idea is to somehow process each email. If I can’t deal with it right then and there, I’ll get it into other systems or other labels in Gmail, but OUT of my inbox.

Evernote

I obviously use and recommend Evernote. It is an incredibly valuable application which allows you to collect information in notebooks as well as tag it. It can, then, act as a digital extension to your brain, holding all kinds of info that you can’t keep in your head (nor should you). With appropriate tags, you can easily find the information later. Plus, it is all seachable anyway.

The best thing about Evernote, too, is the ability to send your data up to “the cloud” – meaning, the Internet. You can set up a free account with Evernote and store your data up there. You can then sync your data with any other computer running Evernote. You can even access it on your mobile phone or directly on the web. They provide a certain monthly data transfer for free every month (which will be adequate for most people), with a premium account for a small fee.

OmniFocus

OmniFocus is the todo list manager which I use. It is for the Mac only, however Windows people have options available to them as well.

When choosing a task manager, you’re going to find many which subscribe to a system referred to as GTD. GTD stands for “Getting Things Done” and is a book written by Dave Allen on exactly that. The system Allen outlines is very common sense, but has been adopted by many – especially in the Internet community. I would recommend that you become familiar with the GTD system and begin using a task management program which is set up with GTD in mind.

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