I’m constantly amazed how many folks have inboxes with thousands of unread messages. Maybe it’s just me but I really couldn’t deal with the stress this caused.

I’ve been following an “inbox zero” approach for a good 6 or 7 years now and it’s done wonders for my stress levels.

You also avoid a tonne of time trying to hunt through messages to find the one you were looking for.

In-box zero may seem like some kind of mythical state, but it’s actually fairly straight forward. It’s really just a simple system of prioritisation.

If you can respond straight away, do. Otherwise triage into either.

1. Respond
2. Action
3. Hold

All the emails in respond are things that you can respond to but will take a bit more time, so you group them together and deal with them in batches.

Action emails require you to do something first.

Hold emails are generally things you’re waiting on from somebody else.

The system is simple. The main challenge is getting from inbox X,XXX to your first zeroed inbox. This requires you to either a) set aside serious dedicated time to get your shit in order or b) nuke your inbox and start again from scratch.

I know your going to hate me for saying this, but I think an inbox containing thousands of unread messages is actually pretty unfair on those around you. Especially if you’re a manager.

With thousands on unread messages, you’re forcing others to do unnecessary labour on your behalf. To remember that you still haven’t done the thing you said you were going to do and change you up, which is pretty shitty.

It also may be because you hate having difficult conversations or saying no to stuff, so your prefer the other person to get fed up and either forget or stop chasing you, rather than respond to say you can’t do the thing. Which is also pretty shitty behaviour.

Whatever the reason you’re basically creating administrative debt for others to sort out on your behalf, which isn’t cool.

I know it’s hard. I know you’re probably being looped into a tonne more emails that you need. Email often becomes a todo list imposed by others, which sucks. However ignoring them ain’t gonna help. And unwittingly ghosting friends and colleagues begets more ghosting behaviour.