I thought the day would never come. I have finally cleaned out my entire email inbox. Or in the words of Merlin Mann, “Inbox Zero”. Which is based on David Allen’s book Getting Things Done.

Simply put, I have processed my entire mailbox. Which is a very good thing! I actually feel a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders. There aren’t any important emails hidden down at the bottom of my inbox. I have taken care of all of the quick response emails that have been just sitting there.

Processing your mailbox is simply deciding what to do with your emails:
- Delete it
- Archive it
- Defer it for later response
- Generate an action from it
- Respond to it immediately

Now that my inbox is at zero, which is a huge first step. I need to keep it that way.

Here are Merlin’s top 5 tips to email productivity:
1) Shut off auto-check - Either turn off automatic checking completely, or set it to something reasonable, like every 20 minutes or so.
2) Pick off easy ones - If you can retire an email with a 1-2 line response, do it now.
3) Write less - Stop imagining that all your emails need to be epic literature; get better at just keeping the conversation moving by responding quickly and with short actions in the reply.
4) Cheat - Use something like MailTemplate to help manage answers to frequent email subjects.
5) Be honest - If you know in your heart that you’re never going to respond to an email, get it out of sight, archive it, or just delete it.

Now I am ready to take on any email that decides to enter my inbox.

(Image by Rian Heim)

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