The Empty Inbox Strategy – Increase Your Productivity

I’m an ardent follower of The Empty Inbox Strategy. In a high-paced environment such as e-business (or pretty much any other business these days), where the shop is always open and you’re often involved in many different projects at the same time, I find this very important to find quality time to actually work.

The Empty Inbox Strategy is not talking about always having an empty inbox, because that’s impossible, but creating the feeling that you’re in control and not letting the number of messages stray above what is visible at a quick glance. If you’re one of those people with 423 unread e-mails, then there are definitely ways to increase your productivity.

You can start by applying the two-minute rule, meaning that anything that can be dealt with within two minutes, should be done straight away. And before you dig any further, looking for actionable items (action points), make sure you have set up your folders properly. For example, I let all e-mails where I’m CC:ed go into the CC-folder (using Outlook rules). Which I then never look at.

Just kidding. I look at it once or twice a day and if I don’t see anything I need to create into an action point from or deal with directly, I put all the e-mails in my mail archive. Out of sight, out of mind – the key of the Empty Inbox Strategy.

Do you get e-mails you never look at? Unsubscribe or put them in a folder where you quickly scan through them once a day or once a week, depending on your situation. If you’re afraid to miss something important either in CC or in some other inbox, don’t worry too much, if it’s important enough they will call you. And if you’re CC, chances are it’s more “FYI” than anything else.

When you have your folders in order and all your relevant e-mail rules set up, it’s time to clear your inboxes and put the right e-mails in the right place. If you find actionable points, put them in your to-do list, I use Any.do for that, but there are plenty of options. If you find reference information, just put it in an appropriate folder or do like me and make notes in Evernote. And if you prefer saving attachement as files, why not get a Dropbox account to make sure you always have them available?

When you have sorted out all your action points, put your meetings in your calendar and stored your reference e-mails in the correct folders and/or in Evernote, you should have an empty inbox. This will give you a fantastic feeling of accomplishment.

Make sure you do this exercise once or twice a day and your working life will be so much more productive. There are some other tips and tricks you can use to minimize your inbox stress and increase your productivity:

* Turn off notifications. Sounds, pop-ups, things that break off your attention. Bad idea.

* Why not make your dock (OS X) or start bar invisible? It does eat up your attention for no good reason.

* Train yourself NOT to check your inbox every ten minutes. This disruption is pointless and very destructive.

* Set a routine where you go through e-mails at certain times throughout the day. If you’re super busy maybe once or twice is enough? Let’s say you do it once in the morning and once in the afternoon. If you set half-an hour for replying to e-mails and organizing/emtpying your inbox, you will suddenly feel like you have all the time in the world to write that report, brainstorm new ideas or do the necessary research.

Hope this Empty Inbox Strategy helps to increase your productivity. Please comment or share if it does.

Thanks for reading. /J.