Whoa, ok that tweet got REACTIONS.

So, Inbox Zero. How to do it? A thread.

First, recognize email for what it is. It's a cess pit and a time suck of everyone else's expectations for you. It is a mediocre way to communicate with others. It is a tool that will ruin your mental sanity and will control you if you don't control it.

You want to spend as little time in your email as possible because you have a job and a life. So your job is to translate your email into two things: resources and a to-do list.

Most important is your to-do list. First requirement: that it seamlessly integrates with your email and saves a link to the email in question when you create a task from an email. If you use Gmail, I suggest Todoist. Second requirement: it has a mobile AND desktop app.

Install both mobile and desktop apps and the email integrator. Now all your emails that have actions associated to them get opened, turned into tasks, and archived immediately. They're out of your inbox. For the rest of the day, you only work your task list.

(This presupposes that you've already done the work to go through and delete all of your spam and unsubscribe from all the stupid newsletters. And yes, "read this column from CNN" is a task, so get that on your list.)

What's left are certain resources you may need to keep. This is where I'm weakest, but I'm getting better. Evernote and other apps also integrate and are a good place to stick stuff you want to keep in a searchable format. Flight info, etc stays there and gets deleted later.

The trick is sorting, every time you open your email, until you get to Inbox Zero. Then CLOSING YOUR EMAIL and working on YOUR priorities via your to-do list.

Happy to answer other questions, but this is the gist of it.