A practical guide to implement this strategy quickly and dramatically improve your focus and productivity.

“Inbox Zero” is not about having zero emails

Let’s start with the basics: what does “Inbox Zero” actually mean?

According to the person that coined the term, Merlin Mann, Inbox Zero doesn’t refer to the amount of emails in your inbox but…

…the amount of time an employee’s brain is in his inbox.

Merlin’s words have been misunderstood more than once, so I won’t only reference Merlin’s work but also give you my approach to this philosophy and methodology so that you can get clear insights about it.

My understanding and approach of Inbox Zero

1. Everything that requires your attention can be a distraction if the timing is not right.
2. Clutter-free tools are useful, whereas cluttered tools can drain you of your productivity, focus, and time.
3. A minimalist / clutter-free approach to how you use your tools allows you to manage focus more efficiently and, therefore, be more productive.

Inbox Zero, in my experience, is a great methodology to keep your emails organized, give the exact attention each email deserves, help you manage your time more intentionally, and help you avoid letting emails “get buried in your inbox”.

Productivity leaks — your focus is precious

Before jumping into my step-by-step approach to Inbox Zero, I’d like to expand a little bit about focus.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the meaning of “focus” is:

[U] Careful attention that is given to something such as a task, or the ability to give your full attention to something.

Visualize yourself in a completely white room that only has a table with a blank sheet on it and a pencil at its side for you to craft your next masterpiece.

There’s no smartphone in your pocket or on the table, no laptop with instant messaging apps or emails, no notifications of any kind. It’s just you and your work. Maybe just some nice music in the background.

After a few minutes you’d achieve a level of concentration and dedication to your work that some people call a state of flow: your creativity is at peak levels, your heart rate is calmed, your breath is beautifully rhythmic and soft. You are fully connected to yourself, to your environment, and to your work. You are present and giving it all to one thing.

It sounds very nice. Doesn’t it?

Now, let’s imagine together how the average person works:

• The smartphone is always close to us. Hopefully notifications are turned off, or at least it’s on vibrate. Inevitably, calls and multiple notifications will ring.
• Most people use a computer to work and the computer usually has 1) Instant messaging tools (Slack, Discord, Skype, Zoom, etc); 2) An email client most likely open and receiving several emails a day; 3) A web browser open with many tabs open; N) you name it.
• Multi-tasking is very common, although most of the time it’s prejudicial.
• Our tasks don’t have a defined priority.

I could keep going but I think I’ve gotten my point across: when you focus on a single task you perform much better than when you’re juggling many different tasks and getting distracted every few seconds with a notification or some other nuisance.

Emails are part of those distractions.

Let’s see how we can leverage our email to be a useful tool that makes us more productive.

Inbox Zero: Step by step

1. Use the snooze feature

You probably don’t need to read an email (or respond to it) right away. You may read or respond to it later. I use Gmail and it has a really nice feature called “Snooze.” It basically says “I’ll check this email later, so please leave it out of my inbox for now”.

Snoozing emails is a great way of cleaning up your inbox. A less crowded inbox looks better, simpler, and nicer. Even though the point of Inbox Zero is not reducing your inbox to 0 emails, we often think that new emails haven’t been processed yet and therefore require a response. So if you don’t give them attention now, they can’t clog your mental space by reminding you that you have something to respond to — instead of relying on your systems to do that work for you.

You know that if you have an email in your inbox it’s because that email requires your concentration. Otherwise, you can snooze it until you’ve got time for it.

2. Close your Email client

Yeah, seriously. Don’t leave it open, whether it’s a desktop application or a browser tab, close it and keep it closed.

Why? Because some part of your brain will always know that’s something related to your work, and that it will probably require attention from time to time, spontaneously.

Here’s a fun way to understand it: imagine that at any time someone could randomly appear out of nowhere and slap you in the face. Intense, right?! It definitely is. How could you possibly focus on your work when you know that when you least expect it you’ll get smacked?

That’s how your mind struggles to stay centered when there are active “distractors’’ around. It’s always waiting for the slap.

3. Unsubscribe from email lists

Take a few minutes to analyze your inbox. How many useless emails do you have? Chances are that you have tons of them, as most people do.

My rule of thumb:

Unsubscribe from anything unless you deeply care about it.

This rule stems from the “default to NO” rule, which basically means that to protect your focus you say NO to everything as default. When you say “yes” to something, it’s because you truly care about that thing and you’ll commit your full attention to it.

At least for me and for many people I know, unsubscribing from lists is something that I have to do every day (and I do not subscribe to lists very often). Know that this activity is like cleaning, so you’ll probably have to perform it on a regular basis.

4. Delete emails (you don’t need to store everything!)

Emails are cumulative. You’ll probably continue to receive emails daily for the rest of your (email address’) life.

Emails such as:

• Notifications (“John Doe wants to follow you on Instagram”);
• Invites (“Invitation: Team meeting @ Tue …”);
• OTP codes (“This is your code from TheSecureWebsite”), password recovery links, etc.

And others can be deleted once processed. They are only temporarily relevant.

Before archiving or organizing an email, think twice if it wouldn’t be better gone for good (actually, if you regret it, most email clients will give you 30 days to recover it).

5. Be respectful of others’ inboxes

The first you may think when talking about respect is SPAM, but it goes beyond that.

I am very serious about emails. If you sent me an email, it’s because you wanted to communicate something to me, so I’d use my precious time to read through it.

If the email was not meant for me (e.g. I’m CC’d “just because”), I’m still using my precious time to process it and get it out of my inbox.

Consider others’ time to be as precious as yours. You can buy a lot of things, but you can’t buy time. If you’re a top producer, you really care about the things you dedicate time to, and… you get pretty upset when you (or someone else) wastes it. So:

• Don’t send SPAM, ever.
• Don’t answer if you don’t need to.
• Avoid copying people unnecessarily.
• Take people out of the loop when they don’t need to be there.

6. Disable email notifications

Once you reach this point, you’ll already have a great set of practices in place in regards to email checking.

Email checking is an activity you do intentionally, carefully, and logistically.

Why, then, would you allow notifications to drag you away from the high quality work you’re producing? You’d probably prefer to schedule a time (or times) during the day to go over your inbox.

Personally, I love muting notifications. This is because I don’t want things to control my time.

Disable email notifications on all your electronic devices and schedule when (and for how long) you’ll check and work on your emails.

7. Don’t over-organize

Most email clients have amazing search capabilities. The times when you needed to create a complex hierarchy of hundreds of folders is long gone.

This is how I organize emails:

• I have a “Processed” folder. Once I’m done with an email I just move it to a “Processed” folder. That email lived a good life: someone wrote it to me, I read it, I did something about it (responded to it, did some work, or whatever else), and now it’s finished. I either delete the email or move it to the “Processed” folder.
• I create folders or labels for emails that are very important or need to be associated with a project. I still use folders or labels, but only for very specific things. My default is not using them, but I might need them for very specific cases. Anyhow, these folders or tags are created under the “Processed” folder. Again, I want to eliminate clutter.
• My Inbox only contains the emails I need to work on or snooze for later. If an email is in my inbox that means two things: 1) I received it just now and have not yet processed it; or 2) I snoozed it earlier and I now need to deal with it. So I can quickly prioritize which email I’ll process first. My goal is to deal with each email completely so I can move it to my “processed” folder and continue with my work.

That’s it. Your inbox is one of the things that’s much more enjoyable if you keep it simple.

Gmail has another useful feature called “Swipe Actions”, which are actions you set when you swipe left or right on an email. For example, I use delete for right swipe and move to for left swipe.

Final word: Start now

One of the Lean principles says that you should start now. You don’t need to find the perfect time to start. You don’t need to wait for one full day to clean up your inbox and start from zero.

Start today!

Our strongest habits are built and executed consistently over time. Even in messy, complicated, or busy times.

The best thing about the tips I’ve written is that you can apply all of them straight away, right now. Today, even if you’re currently staring at a cluttered inbox.

Treat your focus, time, and energy with the respect they deserve. Manage your email intentionally and efficiently. Keep it as a tool to maximize productivity instead of a distraction that drains your energy and de-focuses you.

Have you already implemented these tips? Do you have your own hacks for maintaining a clean inbox? Please write any questions or suggestions you may have in the comments below, and let me know how it goes!

Thanks for reading.