I read about this technique years ago but cannot recall the name of the book. After reading this I decided to spend a pomodoro clearing my inbox. I managed to go through 1,200 messages in 25 minutes. I’m now down to 60 messages, all from the past week, that may or may not require attention on my part (hard to tell because they are mostly one–off messages).
UPDATE: I was thinking of Mark Hurst’s Bit Literacy. Check out his Gift Guide that he puts out every year, it’s terrific.
In a sentence: Don’t reply or even read most of your emails.
Your inbox can be cleared in minutes with that method.
Here’s how I suggest you do it:
- Select all junk mail, newsletters, routine notifications, auto-replies, joke emails, chain mail, ads, anything else not super important. Delete em.
- Select about half (or more) of the other emails that you know are not important, just from the subject line. Archive em.
- Quickly read through the rest, archiving almost every one of them. Select a few to reply to or act on (5 at the most). Those will be your most important.
- Reply to them in three sentences or less, act on them immediately, or put them on your calendar to do later.
Done.
Following this method, you can process your inbox in less than 5 minutes if you’re quick (use keyboard shortcuts).
