A Beginner’s Guide to Inbox Zero
Create more space for focus.
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A Deceptively Simple Methodology
Inbox Zero is a productivity methodology referring to the practice of maintaining an empty inbox. While this is most commonly applied to email, it can also apply to other “stuff” like desk papers, snail mail, or even phone notifications.
In this digital world, we are more consumed by information than ever. If you don’t have a system to manage all the information coming at you on a daily basis, you’re likely lose track of important information and get behind on what truly needs to be done. Especially in this work from home era where everything is coming through the same channels, each and every day. It all starts to look the same and it paralyzes us.
I’m here to explain this deceptively simple (yet oh-so-important) methodology in a context that is particularly useful to students.
Why do I need Inbox Zero?
The simplest answer? If you’re like most people, you probably don’t have (0) inboxes right now, or ever.
Having an email inbox overflowing with various tasks, documents, and requests or a desk piled in papers does not exactly inspire you to get working. It grips you in a decision fatigue of what to do next. It distracts your attention from your priorities, leaving you at the mercy of doing others’ bidding first. And most importantly, it just plain causes you anxiety to look at it.
Let’s be real, anyone would want an empty inbox over one with thousands of unread emails. It’s overwhelming and stressful when it truly doesn’t have to be. Inbox Zero teaches you how to manage it all in a way that reduces stress.
Photo by Richard Dykes on Unsplash
What isn’t Inbox Zero?
The biggest distinction that needs to be made here is what Inbox Zero isn’t. Because there are a lot of misconceptions to be made. So what isn’t it?
It isn’t just deleting everything. That’s emptying it to zero, sure, but that’s not the process we’re talking about. If you just delete or physically get rid of everything, sure, the stress is gone! But it’s a temporary fix. If you don’t instead create an efficient system to empty your inbox — and keep it that way — it’s just going to fill up again.
Therefore, it also isn’t simply an empty inbox. It’s more than that. It’s an efficient system of emptying your inboxes. So it’s not that your inbox is empty, it’s that you emptied it in a way that is useful and productive. To where you get things done that you need to do, where nothing important is lost or forgotten.
And lastly, on that note, it isn’t just stuffing things into folders. Sure, that might seem logical and organized, but all you’re really doing is separating the disorganization into still fairly disorganized chunks. You need to process what goes into those folders, if you choose to use them at all.
You need to KonMari that sh*t so your workspace sparks joy.
What “stuff” can I process?
Though this method began with email, it can — and should — be used for so much more. To-do lists, “snail mail”, scratch paper, and most importantly for students, “physical inboxes”. Anything where things collect and have to be processed is fair game.
As a student, you get a lot of paper thrown at you. Homework, projects, quizzes, tests, and handouts galore. Especially at campus events where there are fliers and pamphlets. Some of that information is useful, some of it isn’t. The idea here is that, just like your email, you can process this “stuff” so that it is actually useful to you and not just making piles and piles of papers you’ll likely never touch again unless you recycle it. Which is essentially a physical version of deleting all of your emails. In other words, just as ineffective at preventing the mess in the first place.
Photo by Jeff Sheldon on Unsplash
How do I use it?
First of all, turn off your notifications for email and any social media that you end up ignoring notifications from. For example, I don’t need a notification the second someone likes an Instagram post of mine, so I turn those off and check them at my leisure. Snapchat I turn off pop-up notifications and leave the red badge.
You might prefer to keep those notifications, and that’s fine. We all have different priorities, just make sure you’re actually prioritizing them.
But that’s just for your phone.
Handling Physical Inboxes
I personally use letter trays, but even an empty cardboard box will do.
My system is a two-tray system with the bottom tray as my inbox and the top as my outbox.
Whenever I come home with a stack of papers from school or wherever else, I put them in my inbox. Then, as soon as possible, I organize them as explained in the section below.
Anything I’ve processed or completed that needs to be sent back out I will put into the upper outbox so I know exactly where it is and can easily bring it with me when I leave. For me, it’s a great system to organize loose papers rather than stuffing them into a holding folder where you’ll inevitably forget about them.
Organizing Information
Earlier I mentioned folders. For physical items like papers, organizing them into labeled storage folders is a time-trusted idea that works just fine. But for email? I would say not usually. Why? Because email is searchable.
So unless there’s a search term that will pop up too often for search to be useful (for example, an organization name in your email signature), you should archive emails you need to save and search for them later. It takes time and effort to organize every email into neat little folders, yet it only takes seconds to search. I recommend taking the path of least resistance here.
Additionally, when going through this process you want to ask yourself the following questions:
What is it?
This will help you decide what to do with it. But if it’s reference material, file it away in your trusted system for reference material. If it’s a task you can do, put it in a to-do list. If it’s something like an email to where you can respond right now, just respond and get it over with. The goal is to touch it once and transform it rather than leaving it to rot.
Is it due?
This is perhaps the most important question to ask for students. Sure, this seems pretty straightforward. Put the due date into your planner. But take a step back and consider this… Are you actually going to remember to look at that due date later? Probably not.
So in addition to just writing down the due date, you should schedule start dates. You don’t have to have every aspect of the project planned out in order to do this. It can be as simple as setting a date to sit down and brainstorm. However, it’s a step you don’t want to skip because those semester-long projects will catch up to you otherwise.
What do I need to get it done?
This could be anything from a tool such as a voltmeter you need to borrow from your physics professor or even a person to delegate work to if you’re leading a project. Again, if you don’t need anything to do it and it’s quick to respond to, just do it now!
When to Use Inbox Zero Techniques
Lastly, there are two different approaches that you can take with this system that can become really useful when used together. These are things you’ll want to schedule in order to prevent “inbox overwhelm” from taking over your days.
Everyday
Unless you’re waiting on an urgent and important email, it’s better to check your email a few scheduled times a day rather than constantly refreshing because, frankly, it’s a time-waster. The amount of time opening your mail app, refreshing, and waiting to load you do throughout the day can end up being more time-consuming than sitting down a couple scheduled times each day and tackling it all at once.
As a student, your professors expect you to be on top of your email, so on the daily level you should aim to set aside 30 minutes a day to handle all of your email. I have set into my morning routine a quick morning email check over breakfast in case something urgent pops up, then in my nightly routine I sit down for another 15 minutes or so deleting, archiving, and responding as part of my daily planning.
Important to note here, this everyday approach is specifically for email. Not every inbox you have needs to be combed through this thoroughly each day, which is where the next approach comes in.
Weekly
For me, this in an integral part of my Sunday mornings. I wake up, jog down eight flights of stairs to pick up my snail mail of the week, jog back up, and get started (it’s a great way to wake myself up).
What inboxes do I tackle on Sundays? Snail mail (the student budget requires coupon-clipping), non-urgent papers I got from my professors the previous week, and any other loose papers that came my way, which includes the piles of paper that stack up around my desk during the week. Then I process it like everything else.
Photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash
And that’s it! You’re ready to start organizing yourself to Inbox Zero. Good luck and have a great semester!
The original form of this article was published to Tumblr on November 28, 2015. This version was adapted and cross-posted on Medium.
