Productive Life
Inbox Mess to Inbox Zero
I appreciate that the ultimate concept of an email Inbox Zero is not having a consistently empty inbox. It’s aiming for white space in your inbox and not being overwhelmed by your email. It’s limiting the time you spend in email so you can get all the things done you actually need to get done. It’s not having that red badge on the mobile app with more than a low two-digit number at any given time.
I worked at a previous city where the IT department publicly (and playfully) shamed our city manager at a city department meeting for NEVER archiving anything. His inbox was bloated with THOUSANDS of emails. The point of this particular city meeting was to implement new archiving and retention rules for our city emails, and the idea IT was trying to get across was that we should be aiming for Inbox Zero. (As well as the importance of saving certain kinds of emails for the inevitable FOIA-type requests, while also not taking up all the city’s server space.)
In Maura Nevel Thomas’ The Happy Inbox she offers a way we can reframe how we use our email inboxes:
Picture the physical mailbox at your house or office. Imagine that every day, you got the mail, opened it, looked at it, and then put it all back in the mailbox. Tomorrow, your letter carrier comes and puts that day’s mail on top of the mail you’ve…
