I’m a smart guy.
I must be, because every night when I go to bed I have a round number of emails in my inbox.
Zero.
That’s a round number, in more ways than one.
Why does everyone else struggle to achieve that?
I haven’t met another person who does Inbox Zero effectively.
Look, as writer Kris Gage says, everything that’s tossed at you is not your obligation.
So, when you get an email, make an IMMEDIATE decision to do one of three things with it:
- Respond if it’s urgent, important and it’ll take less than 2 minutes, or
- Move to a “Non-Urgent But Important” (NUBI) folder, and put time aside to service that folder every day, or
- Delete and/or unsubscribe if you don’t want to read/respond now or ever.
Note there isn’t a number 4. Leave in inbox.
Don’t make someone else’s email your lingering problem.
Jonny