Working with email: How to reduce the number of incoming messages to zero

In our blog, we write a lot about creating emails and working with e-mail. We have already discussed the complexity of anti-spam , the future of email , the protection of postal correspondence , as well as the techniques of working with email , used by the leaders of large IT companies.

Some of them use the Inbox Zero approach - Thiago Forte, the head of Forte Labs, a company involved in efficiency, wrote an article on his blog about how to start using this technique and reduce the number of incoming letters to zero. We present to you the highlights of this material.
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Forte writes that he spends 17 minutes a day on e-mail, which is 7.43% of his working time in the past 12 months. For comparison, the average worker spends 28% of his time, sorting out email, creating messages and responding to them.



Everyone knows that the main idea of ​​Inbox Zero technology is to “process each email in one approach” (the One-Touch approach). But most users do not understand that this simple technique requires a lot of effort - it should be based on a carefully designed system.

Imagine for a second a person who is checking your email inbox. He scans the letters received during the day, selecting the journals and letters that need to be studied.



“I don’t need a system - let everything be stored in my inbox!”

Then he leaves everything in the Inbox — an overdue receipt for electricity, spam, a personal card, and tax forms. This ritual is repeated every day, his mailbox is filled with all new letters and literally cracks at the seams.

This is how most people work in email. Their mailboxes swell to incredible sizes, letters are sent almost continuously, and the variety of letter categories is growing. But the truth is that you will need much less time and effort to maintain an empty mailbox than a crowded one, Forte is convinced.

Here are 5 simple steps on your way to an empty email account.

A few simple tips:

1. Unsubscribe from all newsletters, notifications and group chats, unless they are of special importance (you may need the Unroll.me service to do this )
2. Redirect all your email accounts to Gmail or any other mail service you use to work.
3. Use Mailstrom to delete hundreds (or thousands) of unwanted e-mails at a time, and then move the remaining ones from the Inbox to a specially marked folder.

And don't worry about missing out on some important information. First, examine the letters that are within reach, and you can return to the rest later.

Mail should be used for its intended purpose.

The main problem is that people use email for everything. After all, you would not buy a multifunctional cleaner for a toaster-punch-toilet, would not you? And the combination of leaf cleaning machines with an immersion blender would not have seemed like a good idea to you?

But at the same time, we somehow manage to inject absolutely absolutely incompatible functions into the most important working tool, turning it into a kind of Frankenstein. The mailbox serves as a means of communication for us, a list of tasks, a project administrator, a notification system, a list of books, an archive for storing files, an archive of negotiations, a tool for planning, an application for notes and more.

We “hired” an email to do one simple job, and now it’s like a laborer who lives in our basement and performs a bunch of additional tasks until late at night. So let's return the e-mail its original function, which it performs better than any other tool: receiving new messages.

With any other function, one of the specialized applications will cope much better. The most ironic thing is that it’s not so easy to reduce Gmail’s work to just one key function. The Gmail development team has provided everything we could need to work in email, and now we just have to give up these fancy tools to get something useful.

To streamline your email management process:

4. Disable the "Additional folders" function.

When you learn how to process each letter in just a few seconds, additional folders will only complicate the process. Oddly enough, due to the effect of economies of scale, a large volume of letters will only play into your hands.

5. Disable all smart features.

All these clever features are poorly adapted to the outdated system. They are only a short-term solution to a long-term problem.

Asterisks, privacy indicators, system tags, categories, circles, markers, filters - get rid of all this and breathe in with relief.

6. Disable all chat rooms and social networking apps.

Real-time interaction and chat rooms will not disappear anywhere, but by turning off all unnecessary functions, you will spend so little time in the email and will be so focused on fast processing of electronic messages that the chats will only distract you.

7. Disable all notifications.

Your mailbox is someone's to-do list. Remember this every time you give permission to anyone to interrupt your work at any time for any reason.

Try to turn off notifications for at least a week. And also turn off all notifications in the operating system on your computer, phone and other devices.

It is necessary to install four systems for information distribution / processing.

The mailbox is full for the same reason that any input system is blocked: the lack of effective information distribution / processing systems.

Letters accumulate because they have nowhere to distribute. However, be careful, otherwise you can inadvertently get rid of the necessary and useful information. The idea behind Inbox Zero technology is not to ignore incoming messages or theatrically declare "email bankruptcy." I have the exact opposite attitude: every email is important without exception.

If you have not installed information processing systems that cover 100% of incoming messages, consider that you simply drained the lake with a pump - the lower the water level now, the faster the lake will fill up again. Absolutely any incoming letter can be processed by one of 4 information distribution / processing systems: digital calendar, task manager, application for storing and accessing information and application for deferred reading.

The calendar, as a tool for working with information, is quite simple and understandable - let's look at other tools, and then move on to the rules that will help you effectively use all these tools at once.

Task manager

Task Manager is the digital version of the task list. The digital task manager has many advantages, but for us the most important thing is one single function: the ability of this program to save your letters as tasks in one click and assign them reminders.

Forte writes that he uses himself and advises others to work with the task manager Things (suitable only for Mac and iOS), since he copes with this function perfectly well: when you press a certain key combination (ctrl-alt-space), a small translucent window appears on the screen with an automatically displayed link to the initial email and a cursor to specify the task:



Another good task manager for non-Apple users is Todoist . This is a special Gmail extension that is designed to integrate your email client into the Todoist task manager. The Add Task button appears on the right side of the Gmail toolbar. By clicking on it, you can write the task in a special window, which will become a link to the original email:



It is important that these links work no matter where the email is moved, so the user will not have to categorize emails, put labels, checkboxes, etc. Just follow the link in the task manager, and the desired email will appear on the screen.

This small function is not only at the core of the task manager, but also of the entire One-Touch approach. Since the whole system depends on the user's ability to transfer tasks from a cluttered e-mail box to a specially designed tool, he will trust such a tool that can instantly and accurately redirect him to the right email at the right time, regardless of whether it received 2 hours or 2 years ago.

Applications for storing and accessing information

This is probably the most useful tool that few people know about. Its purpose is very simple: to save information that may be useful in the future - documents, notes or any files that you for some reason do not want to delete.

Most often, people save this information to a computer, Dropbox or other cloud service, or simply leave it in an email archive or in a project management application. Such an approach is not rational for a number of reasons, but it is sufficient that this is quite valuable information, for the storage of which a specially designed tool is needed.
Regardless of which application you use (Forte recommends Evernote), the main thing is that you can quickly and easily transfer any necessary information to it from your inbox.

Application for deferred reading

The application for deferred reading allows you to save videos, the content of web pages, articles, posts from blogs for what to read them later. In such an application, you can put emails that do not require you to perform actions (like those that you put in the task manager), as well as information that you would like to read / view / listen to in your free time, but are not sure what it is keep it.

This is just one of 4 additional information processing / distribution systems, but you will be surprised how much benefit such a single-purpose tool can bring. It does not matter which application for deferred reading you use (Forte's choice is Instapaper), the main thing is to be able to send emails directly to it from email.

Need to optimize workflow

Work in e-mail does not obey the laws of classical Newtonian physics. As the number of incoming messages increases from 100 to 200, 300, and 400, the time and energy spent on processing them do not grow in direct proportion of 2, 3, and 4 times.
In this case, chaos theory is more likely: at a certain moment, the amount of time / energy needed crosses a critical line, an unpredictable, invisible border. One phase is replaced by another, just as ice turns into water, and water into steam. Changing parameters negatively affects your entire workflow.

The aforementioned information distribution / processing systems are not enough. It is also necessary to develop a method. Carefully thought-out method of processing incoming messages will allow us to determine the period of time spent on each email, depending on time constraints and other conditions.

Here you can resort to the rule of 2 minutes, according to which you should not postpone for later those tasks whose execution takes no more than 2 minutes. The problem is that this time criterion is not universal. If, after returning from vacation, you found 1,200 new letters in your mailbox and decided to follow the two-minute rule, then you will spend a few days doing two-minute tasks and, probably, skip the really important tasks. A similar situation can happen after the weekend.

We should create an alternative, say, for example, the 10 seconds rule, which will allow (but will not oblige), if necessary, process hundreds of incoming emails in 15-20 minutes in order to get down to their real work more quickly and not worry about a ticking bomb in the mailbox.

The key idea of ​​the One-Touch approach is that when you receive a letter that requires you to perform a specific task, you should not immediately begin to perform it — you must decide what actions need to be taken and at what time, and then move the letter to the appropriate attachment. Thus, you develop the ability to make quick decisions (execute, save, read or delete), thereby postponing the task until a more suitable time in the future.

Thanks to this method, checking e-mail requires no more effort than checking regular mail - you only decide what needs to be done, but do not do it. And this will help you 3 points of the Gmail application:

8. Enable the auto-transition feature in the Gmail Lab.

With a systematic email check, the most difficult thing is not to be distracted by new letters. It is very difficult to decide on each letter in order of priority, not postponing until later and not missing a single list. Turn on the automatic transition feature, and instead of getting into your inbox again and again, you will immediately move on to the next letter in chronological order.

9. Activate hotkeys

Most of the time when working in e-mail we perform the same simple actions. Activate the hotkeys, and you can process dozens of emails at once, without even touching the mouse:

• To write the letter in a new window: with
• Reply: r
• Reply all: a
• Forward: f
• Add to archive: e
• Send: cmd-enter

10. Activate the discussion threads .

Forte offers to process emails in chronological order from old to new, because your desire to get fresh letters will make you deal with old ones. By activating the discussion threads, you will see previous responses to group messages and, thus, you will not respond to old messages by mistake.

It is important to be able to make instant decisions when sorting letters.

All that was discussed above - information distribution / processing systems and workflow optimization - strengthen the ability to make instant decisions on the distribution / sorting of incoming emails.



60-70% of all letters are likely to go to the archive, since they mostly contain notifications that you just need to view. You can also create a reminder, as in step 4, in case your letter goes unanswered and you need to resend it.

Any system with an uncontrolled positive feedback circuit will eventually collapse.

The email processing system is not created to send and receive them more often. In essence, this is the problem. E-mail has a very powerful positive feedback: the more letters you send and receive, the more letters your colleagues, partners and customers send and receive. We are conducting an arms race in which there are no winners, and an increase in our effectiveness only aggravates the situation.

As Donella Meadows writes , positive feedback chains are sources of development and growth, but also sources of destruction and decay. A system with an uncontrolled chain of positive feedback will ultimately collapse - so today we feel the need to be in touch 24 hours a day, which exceeds our biological and neurochemical limits.

Our main goal is to reduce reactivity, since everything that forces us to act has control over us. The sign that you have changed, that the system is working, will be the day when you, having received an e-mail with the awesome heading "Very Important", do not rush to the fulfillment of an urgent task, but act with it just like any other letter. You complete the task when you decide to do it yourself.

You will need your new super-ability to react to everything “not instantly”, because when you learn to focus your energy rather than dissipate it, you will begin to entrust the routine work to tools, systems, assistants, subordinates, and maybe sometime to machines with artificial intelligence, the result is not long in coming. The rest of your work will require a lot more intellectual and creative efforts from you.