Anybody practicing "inbox zero"? Thoughts?

[Train]

Been thinking of trying this for years, and I see more and more people doing it.

I feel as though I still miss emails, due to me reading them or glancing at them, but then never acting on the ones I should because they are marked as read.

Anybody doing it? Worth the effort?

For the unlearned: http://inboxzero.com/

 

[Markbnj]

I'm currently practicing "inbox 743," but it will probably be "inbox 744" before I can even... yep, there it is.

 

[KeithTalent]

I never have anything unread in my personal Gmail box. Looking at my work inbox I have 18,309 unread. :hmm:

KT

 

[Fritzo]

I have Inbox 5363. We use Google Apps so it's easier to just label everything than keep it clean. The new Tabs feature kicks ass also.

 

[vshah]

i have 0 unread emails across all accounts. it's not that hard.

 

[silverpig]

I have 9 emails in my gmail inbox. All the rest are tagged in folders as I deal with them. Anything left in my inbox needs my attention despite having been read already.

 

[Chaotic42]

That "What is Inbox Zero" page has no meaningful content. I guess it's "Webpage Zero".

 

[mmntech]

I archive all my emails just to cover my own ass.

 

[poofyhairguy]

i have 0 unread emails across all accounts. it's not that hard.

It is to go back and do it. My personal gmail has 16,428 unread.

 

[Mixolydian]

i have 0 unread emails across all accounts. it's not that hard.

This.

 

[sao123]

I try to practice Inbox 20. I keep no more than 20 messages at one time...ever.

 

[Schfifty Five]

i have 0 unread emails across all accounts. it's not that hard.

Agreed. I bet most people leave email unread in their inbox so as to give themselves a sense that they are important, too important to read and/or respond to an email.

 

[blackangst1]

That “zero?” It’s not how many mes*sages 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. That’s it.

What?

 

[Jeff7]

What?

It's...ya know....things, and stuff, like whatever and junk.

Stuff stays in my inbox, until it reaches an age of several months, at which point it gets moved over to an archived inbox.

What I'm seeing about this is that it's talking about "actioning" items in your inbox immediately.
"But <person who's key to this> is on vacation, so I can't do anything about it."
"This isn't even about my department...but why am I being made to do it anyway?"
"Not much of anything can be done with this until the parts arrive in 4 weeks."
"I'm already busy 'actioning' the other 5 things that came in ahead of this one...get in line."


Also, this thing seems geared toward keeping your mind organized, which would also improve productivity.

One of the login options to download the presentation: Facebook. Because when I think "productivity"...

 

[OVerLoRDI]

i have 0 unread emails across all accounts. it's not that hard.

Same.

Zero unread work emails. Many unread personal emails (mostly spam)

 

[zinfamous]

I never have anything unread in my personal Gmail box. Looking at my work inbox I have 18,309 unread. :hmm:

KT

sounds about right.

 

[SearchMaster]

i have 0 unread emails across all accounts. it's not that hard.

At my previous job, I averaged 60+ emails an hour. While most were from automated processes and many of those could be deleted without reading, it was still too much to keep up with and get my job done. Sometimes it IS that hard.

I currently get maybe 6-10 (work) emails a day. This I can keep up with

 

[UglyCasanova]

I have about 15 or so emails in my gmail inbox. I really wish there was a folders feature for gmail (if there is, I don't know about it).

At work, I have thousands of emails. I sort them all into folders and keep it very organized. I regularly have to go back to one of my old emails (sometimes a year or two old) to evidence something to someone or back up my case. I try not to keep anything but the most pertinent emails that need to worked in my inbox, which is usually I'd say 40 or so.

 

[Rakehellion]

Been thinking of trying this for years, and I see more and more people doing it.

I feel as though I still miss emails, due to me reading them or glancing at them, but then never acting on the ones I should because they are marked as read.

Anybody doing it? Worth the effort?

For the unlearned: http://inboxzero.com/

I don't know what it is. I clicked the link and I still don't know what it is.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I usually keep everything in my inbox for the week, but if it's read it means I took care of it. I mark as unread if I need to action it.

We get a couple thousand emails a day and even after over a year I still don't have my rules tweaked 100%, and they just upgraded us to Outlook 2007 which meant having to redo all our rules, so sometimes stuff goes missing as I'm skimming through very fast. We also have a ridiculously small quota so I have to delete most emails.

I managed to get down to under 100 emails per week that actually end up in my inbox though, so that's not too bad.

At home it's another story, No quota so I keep every single email, because you never know when you want to go back. I don't really get much email at home though and most are not keepers. forum notifications and crap like that.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

Personal email has zero.

 

[destrekor]

Agreed. I bet most people leave email unread in their inbox so as to give themselves a sense that they are important, too important to read and/or respond to an email.

The concept of inbox zero isn't about "zero unread messages" - it's about "zero acted-upon messages in your inbox"

I make a point to mark everything as read pretty much the moment I get email, in any of my email accounts.

But my inbox is still littered with everything. My Gmail is a lost cause. I have things filtered through labels and whatnot, but... they are still in the inbox, all ~25,000 emails.

I keep telling myself to get with the inbox zero trend with my work email addresses - make folders, utilize them for things I've read that I don't need to worry about anymore (or, categorize things and mark unread again).
At this time, anything that really needs my attention in the near future but I can't get to immediately, I mark unread after reading, or throw the red flag on it in Outlook.
But I need to delete that which is unnecessary, and move to folders that which doesn't need any attention. My goal, if I can get around to it, is to only have emails in my inbox that still need attention, read or unread, flagged or not.

 

[SparkyJJO]

I usually keep everything in my inbox for the week, but if it's read it means I took care of it. I mark as unread if I need to action it.

We get a couple thousand emails a day and even after over a year I still don't have my rules tweaked 100%, and they just upgraded us to Outlook 2007 which meant having to redo all our rules, so sometimes stuff goes missing as I'm skimming through very fast. We also have a ridiculously small quota so I have to delete most emails.

I managed to get down to under 100 emails per week that actually end up in my inbox though, so that's not too bad.

At home it's another story, No quota so I keep every single email, because you never know when you want to go back. I don't really get much email at home though and most are not keepers. forum notifications and crap like that.

You just upgraded to 2007? A little behind the curve don't you think

I could see not getting 2013 (it ticks me off to no end at times, licensing nightmares just make it worse) but I'd have at least gone to 2010 if you needed to upgrade from 2003 or older.

 

[Anubis]

quick math has me at something like inbox 6000 across all acnts i have email going back to like 2001

also i got 92 emails at work today.. BEFORE LUNCH
doing inbox zero is impossible

 

[Red Squirrel]

You just upgraded to 2007? A little behind the curve don't you think

I could see not getting 2013 (it ticks me off to no end at times, licensing nightmares just make it worse) but I'd have at least gone to 2010 if you needed to upgrade from 2003 or older.

Oh I'm surprised this happened actually. We're still on XP and there are no plans to move. Too much proprietary crappy software. 2007 blows too, don't do it! It's soooo slow, choppy, and overall buggy. I'm getting used to the theme now but I found it was really hard to read some of the items too like folder names. I hate how the style these days for programs and websites is using grays instead of solid colors on white. Makes stuff hard to read.