Podcast Episode 22: How to Handle Your Inbox

Many people have issues handling their email.

I think the biggest problems come when people use their inboxes as a type of to-do list.

This allows anyone to add things to your to-do list by simply emailing you.

Email is really a communication and information sharing tool.

You could use it to give you ideas of what to put on your to-do list but your to-do list should be separate.

Method 1 - Inbox 0

Idea, you must sort your email before you read any of them, clear out the clutter!

Unsubscribe from recurring emails

Search for all emails from the same place and delete them all at once

Archive all your important emails like bank statements and such. It might be worth creating an automatic filter to archive these

At this point you should only have emails that you actually want to read and because you’ve seen all of them you can go ahead and start reading/replying to the most important ones.

Remember that just because someone emailed you does not mean that you have to respond or take any action. Guard your time by guarding which tasks you decide to do otherwise others will quickly fill your time with things that are important to them

Method 2 - Ignore method

Idea : If I’m not paying you or you’re not paying me then I’m not going to respond to your email

Use your email as more of a reference. If someone wants to get a hold of you they can call or text. If they then send you attachments or more information in an email then you can quickly find it and use the information

On the whole you just ignore your email. Think of it more as like a facebook newsfeed, you could scroll and scroll and never get to the bottom.

Check your email once a day and only reply to people that are paying you or that you are paying

Ignore everything else

My method - Hybrid

I generally ignore my email most of the time but then once or twice a month I will go in and get to inbox 0.

This works well for me because most of the time my emails aren’t urgent and if they are I just take care of them as they come. (either by responding or adding them to my to-do list) and then once or twice a month I go through all my emails and get to inbox 0. This way I can find anything interesting that might not have been important enough at the time to worry about but that I would like to put on my to-do list.