My Current Inbox Zero System

Amanda Mae
4 min readSep 27, 2022

I’ve written about my Inbox Zero system before, but it keeps evolving!

One thing I enjoy doing is reading articles here on Medium, or finding videos on YouTube, that describe a person’s productivity system. Everyone has little tweaks to some of the basics, and sometimes I get a great idea to change up how I have productivity and get to Inbox Zero. A few weeks ago I stumbled upon one such idea.

This YouTube creator demonstrated how to get a split view in your Gmail Inbox, and then showed how he uses labels to move things out of his main inbox and into next steps:

  • Action Item (things to do),
  • Waiting On (things someone else needs to do first) and
  • Read Later (informational things that aren’t urgent that can be reviewed later).

I LOVE THIS SYSTEM. It’s a total game-changer for me!

I employ David Allen’s Getting Things Done system’s Two Minute Rule for email — if I can tackle it in two minutes, I do it. If it’s going to take longer, I label it an Action Item and archive it. It moves out…

--

--

Amanda Mae
Amanda Mae

Written by Amanda Mae

Amanda Mae is a librarian who has lived in too many states and enjoys anything involving books, history, and productivity.