Inbox Zero

When you've got a pile of email coming in all the time, some of which can be immediately acted on and some can't, you may find yourself with a feeling of paralysis when you look at your inbox with 17 unread messages from a week ago and 4,724 from the last few years (read). If you feel it, keep reading.

Reclaim Your Inbox

There's a recent trend among Dyn employees, particularly in support, to try something called "Inbox Zero." Today I'd heard it enough times that I had to find out what it was. I asked Alan and he sent me this hour long video that I started watching in the background while scraping through my mail in the morning hours.

Strangely, today became the biggest day in getting lots of email demanding my attention and action I've had in months, all while I was learning about Inbox Zero. The idea is to have nothing in your inbox. This is surprisingly easy to achieve.

• act quickly if the request is simple
• use external task tracking rather than your inbox as a TODO list, there are thousands of these
• delete things you'll never need again
• delegate quickly if that's what you need to do
• file mail to folders quickly

I got a few additional tips from Alan.

• set up filters for things you never have to respond to
• make a folder for the folders those filters filter to
• collapse that folder so you don't see that you have mail in those folders

It only took about an hour to sort through my mail and get it filed in such a way that I can now log into my email and see only things that I haven't seen and I need to act on. It's calming and I'm more productive.