I’ve long been a fan of Merlin Mann‘s Inbox Zero philosophy, although not with the religious fervor of some. One of the biggest problems with email is that it ends up being your to-do list. This isn’t bad in theory, but it allows almost anyone to put tasks on your list without your consent. This is not only unreasonable, but it is also highly inefficient and can be stressful.
As Merlin says:
It’s not how many messages are in your inbox–it’s how much of your own brain is in that inbox. Especially when you don’t want it to be.
My good friend Daniel Fraser of Smiling Albino has recently been fighting with an overload of information vying for his attention in his inbox, so it was timely when I came across a page recently by Keith Rarick that outlined a quick method for getting to Inbox Zero with Gmail.
Keith has done a great job of outlining a good system, and you should have a look at what he’s written, but in trying to put together a plan for Daniel, I decided to take his system in a slightly different direction and modify it to use one of Gmails best hidden features – the task list. I’ll summarize and comment on Keith’s steps here and put a summary of my own steps in less detail below.
Step 1 – Turn on Gmail shortcut keys if they aren’t already on (they aren’t by default). Click the gear icon in the top right corner of your Gmail window after you’ve logged in and select “Settings” (link opens Gmail settings in a new browser tab). The settings tab that is open by default should be labelled “General”. Look down the list until you see “Keyboard shortcuts:” and make sure to click the radio button beside “Keyboard shortcuts on”.
While it’s not necessary for the purposes of this article, while you’re spelunking in your settings, I also highly suggest you turn on another great feature of Gmail that has just recently graduated from Gmail Labs but is also turned off by default: the “Send and Archive” button. It should be just a few items above the “Keyboard shortcuts” item. Click the radio button there to turn those on as well, and after you’ve composed a reply to someone you can send and archive the message thread in one click.
Step 2 – Keith’s second tip is to mute conversations with wild abandon (keyboard shortcut “m”). To mute a conversation means that all future emails in that thread will go directly to the Archive without you seeing them. I’m not sure that I like this approach because often conversations that I’m involved in start out irrelevant and then come back to me. Having those conversations muted means that I will be unresponsive to requests in those threads. So, in my opinion, skip this and make the next step your second step.
Step 3 – Triage. This is vitally important when you sit down to complete this task for the first time. As Keith says, your ONLY job at this point is to make your inbox empty, and he’s right. I’m excellent at being distracted by the email in front of me and frequently find myself going off on tangents of exploration when I come across anything interesting (Oooh! Look, cats!)*. You MUST resist this urge while completing this task. The key is to do it while thinking as little as possible.
Keith suggests using Gmail’s stars to identify tasks, but I prefer using Gmail’s built in task manager because: a) it leaves the star feature for other purposes and b) it allows you jot a quick note with the task in the future. Please understand that this feature is extremely dangerous when you are going through this process for the first time because it can be incredibly (and surprisingly) distracting. The first time that you go through the process of getting to Inbox Zero you MUST ignore the temptation to enter any information in the “Notes” section of the task, but it can be handy in the future when you’re keeping your inbox empty as a matter of habit.
In order to turn an email in your inbox into a task, simply press <shift>+T on your keyboard while the message is open. Then hit the “]” key (square bracket) to archive the message and automatically open the next message in your inbox. (Note: if this doesn’t seem to work, go back to step one and make sure that you’ve turned on keyboard shortcuts). The message will disappear and you will be back in your inbox. Never fear, however, you can get the message back when it’s time by accessing it from the task list.
Voila, you’ve started to empty your inbox (and more importantly, your brain) and the things that need to be taken care of are kept in a nice tidy list.
To access the task list in the future, navigate to mail.google.com/tasks/canvas and all the jobs you assigned yourself will be right there waiting for you. All you have to do is click on the “Related email” link and it will open the email right there for you to read about whatever you need to do.
So, in summary, my steps are:
Step 1 –Turn on keyboard shortcuts
Step 2 –Open your first message and if requires action on your part, press <shift>-T (add to task list) and then press “]” (archive and open next message). If you don’t need to do anything about the message (ie., it’s purely informational), just press “]”. If it is obvious that the thread will be useless to you, press “m” (mute) and you won’t see anything new that comes in from the same thread.
Step 3 –Make sure you continue this process until your inbox is empty, then go to your task list and start completing tasks. It’s best if you don’t return to your inbox until you have cleared your inbox, even if this process takes a day or two (trust me, the sky won’t fall – if everything was that important/ urgent, things would have already fallen apart as a result of your poor inbox management).
Step 4 –Maintenance. Make a habit of starting your day in your task list instead of in your inbox. Once you’ve completed your already assigned tasks, dive back into the inbox and repeat the process from my step 2.
One final tip that I think is vitally important is to separate your work and personal emails with separate addresses. Once you have done that you will attain clarity about what it is that you need to do at any given time. Just make sure that you are as ruthless with your personal inbox as you are with your work inbox.
Finally, have a look at Keith’s page if you haven’t already done so to see what his views are of the process. I hope this helps you to tame your inbox and makes it easier to stay on top of your tasks in the future.
* P.S. – If you clicked that cats link, you need these instructions more than you realize. (click here to go back)