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The 15-Minute Inbox: Control Email. Create Time. Lead Your Business.
"Finally a 'how to' book that delivers on its promise." "Highly recommend to anyone - senior executive, CEO, entrepreneur or just starting out on your career." In The 15-Minute Inbox , international business consultant Joost Wouters offers a solution to control your email, create time and spend it instead on activities that really matter. More than a quick fix or another "how-to" guide, The 15-Minute Inbox offers a simple yet powerful approach for everyone who prefers to be a proactive business builder instead of a reactive firefighter. With the introduction of the four M.A.I.L. steps, Joost has created a complete process that will guide you in your journey towards mastering your inbox. You will look at the mindsets and habits you need to change to get your inbox under control in 15 minutes or less. You will find ways to automate a big chunk of your email management and apply the limited actions that are possible to treat each email. You will set up a structure that will help you to implement the new behavior and integrate it in your daily work. And most importantly, you will create clarity about what you will do with all the additional time you have created and on what activities and projects you should spend it instead. Joost Wouters - who has been invited by the management teams of many multinational firms all over the world - reveals the way to make best use of your two most precious your time and your attention. Reviews
This is one of the few 'how-to' books that really delivers on promise. After just a week and a half and only halfway through the book, I had my first empty in-box experience, the dream of any email enslaved professional. While this book is very practical and has an almost instant pay-back it covers the issue of managing your email and thus your time in a holistic way. It contains essential tips and tricks but also goes into the mindset and conceptions we all have and that prevent us from being more efficient and more effective. We take driving lessons before we can take a car to the road. In the same way, you should read this book before you start using email. I love this little book from Joost Wouters - so practical and so full of tips to get in control of email. Let's be honest, managing emails is a challenge and Joost's strategies are just what I need. Highly recommend to anyone - senior executive, CEO, entrepreneur or just starting out on your career. I started to read this book on my flight back home, and after a few pages I was sorry not to have my laptop with me. Let me give you a small read it with your Outlook opened and start to implement the tips as you go through the book. It took me 3 days to get my inbox to zero emails, and more important I kept it like this since then. Fantastic! Clear method to boost your productivity and to get more important things done.
This is one of the few 'how-to' books that really delivers on promise. After just a week and a half and only halfway through the book, I had my first empty in-box experience, the dream of any email enslaved professional. While this book is very practical and has an almost instant pay-back it covers the issue of managing your email and thus your time in a holistic way. It contains essential tips and tricks but also goes into the mindset and conceptions we all have and that prevent us from being more efficient and more effective. We take driving lessons before we can take a car to the road. In the same way, you should read this book before you start using email. I love this little book from Joost Wouters - so practical and so full of tips to get in control of email. Let's be honest, managing emails is a challenge and Joost's strategies are just what I need. Highly recommend to anyone - senior executive, CEO, entrepreneur or just starting out on your career. I started to read this book on my flight back home, and after a few pages I was sorry not to have my laptop with me. Let me give you a small read it with your Outlook opened and start to implement the tips as you go through the book. It took me 3 days to get my inbox to zero emails, and more important I kept it like this since then. Fantastic! Clear method to boost your productivity and to get more important things done.
- GenresBusinessNonfiction
222 pages, Paperback
First published January 19, 2013
11 people are currently reading
31 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 24, 2018
The 15-Minute Inbox was recommended to me as a great tool to control email, create time and lead my business. The tips and strategies are efficient and effective. By putting them into practice I truly created time that I can now spend on activities that really matter. Karen Briscoe, author and podcast host "5 Minute Success"
October 2, 2019
Great tactics!
June 17, 2023
Update June 2023: Ignore my remarks below. After diligent trying, I found that these methods DO NOT WORK and are merely an on-ramp to frustration and burial in endless minutiae. Better to read "A World Without Email" by Cal Newport.
I give it 4 stars because it did inspire me to start implementing an email management system. The author uses the acronym MAIL to describe “how to get control of your inbox”: Mirrors and Mindsets / Actions and Automation / Implement and Integrate / Leverage and Liberation. I found the framework somewhat helpful.
For myself, I already had established much of the right mindset towards email, although there was a strong streak of giving up: I have lately chosen to simply ignore my email in order to dedicate blocks of time to important tasks. This is a good start but has sometimes resulted in my being a bad colleague in failing to provide timely responses.
My action of the moment is to establish a folder structure linked with automation rules. I’ve been procrastinating on this for some time, having long realized that my inbox is clogged with many information-only emails which nonetheless rob me of some of my time each time they appear, and (much worse) often obscure the presence of emails which genuinely require my attention. So far I have set up about a dozen rules. I am responsible for the operation of a piece of enterprise software called “Eprod”, for example – in relation to which I receive numerous automated reports. I now have a folder “Eprod” with subfolders for each category of error or status logs, and as a result I have much less Inbox clutter, and I also have easier access to the information when I need to act on it. I’ve also created rules to delete promotional messages from certain vendors. I even have a rule to delete “Accepted” responses to meeting invitations, since this information is available through the calendar anyway.
Next steps for me are to set up and use the folders that will allow me to have an empty Inbox at least once per day: “Action Today” and “Follow Up”. These need to be used in concert with the idea of “the four plus one D’s: Delete, Deal, Defer, Delegate and Done. I’m big on “Defer” which is why I have been rarely deleting any email, preferring instead to treat my Inbox as a big repository of tasks, actions, and projects – either in-progress, done, or un-done.
I’m actually amazed by now visionary and compelling the idea of an empty-every-day Inbox seems to me now, after reading this book. Before, I felt like the idea was gimmicky, amounting to an arbitrary relocation of incoming email into subfolders. Now, I realize how I can have a more satisfying and productive work experience by following some (fairly obvious) disciplines.
I do have to say that I found that the “Liberation” section sets up a life-encompassing vision that seems overblown and unrealistic. I may or may not use my coming email discipline to transform my entire life in some way, but I don’t see houses on the Mediterranean as being within the light-cone from where I am, let alone connectable with my email management.
I deduct one star for this overreach, as well as some poor grammar throughout. But overall, I say this is potentially life-changing and well worth the read.
I give it 4 stars because it did inspire me to start implementing an email management system. The author uses the acronym MAIL to describe “how to get control of your inbox”: Mirrors and Mindsets / Actions and Automation / Implement and Integrate / Leverage and Liberation. I found the framework somewhat helpful.
For myself, I already had established much of the right mindset towards email, although there was a strong streak of giving up: I have lately chosen to simply ignore my email in order to dedicate blocks of time to important tasks. This is a good start but has sometimes resulted in my being a bad colleague in failing to provide timely responses.
My action of the moment is to establish a folder structure linked with automation rules. I’ve been procrastinating on this for some time, having long realized that my inbox is clogged with many information-only emails which nonetheless rob me of some of my time each time they appear, and (much worse) often obscure the presence of emails which genuinely require my attention. So far I have set up about a dozen rules. I am responsible for the operation of a piece of enterprise software called “Eprod”, for example – in relation to which I receive numerous automated reports. I now have a folder “Eprod” with subfolders for each category of error or status logs, and as a result I have much less Inbox clutter, and I also have easier access to the information when I need to act on it. I’ve also created rules to delete promotional messages from certain vendors. I even have a rule to delete “Accepted” responses to meeting invitations, since this information is available through the calendar anyway.
Next steps for me are to set up and use the folders that will allow me to have an empty Inbox at least once per day: “Action Today” and “Follow Up”. These need to be used in concert with the idea of “the four plus one D’s: Delete, Deal, Defer, Delegate and Done. I’m big on “Defer” which is why I have been rarely deleting any email, preferring instead to treat my Inbox as a big repository of tasks, actions, and projects – either in-progress, done, or un-done.
I’m actually amazed by now visionary and compelling the idea of an empty-every-day Inbox seems to me now, after reading this book. Before, I felt like the idea was gimmicky, amounting to an arbitrary relocation of incoming email into subfolders. Now, I realize how I can have a more satisfying and productive work experience by following some (fairly obvious) disciplines.
I do have to say that I found that the “Liberation” section sets up a life-encompassing vision that seems overblown and unrealistic. I may or may not use my coming email discipline to transform my entire life in some way, but I don’t see houses on the Mediterranean as being within the light-cone from where I am, let alone connectable with my email management.
I deduct one star for this overreach, as well as some poor grammar throughout. But overall, I say this is potentially life-changing and well worth the read.
February 6, 2017
Many of us are overwhelmed with emails that build up in our inboxes. However, it doesn't have to be this way even if you are one of those people who get enormous amounts of emails per day. In The 15-Minute Inbox, Joost Wouters explains, it is what we do or not do with those emails that makes all the difference. Leaving read emails in the inbox, not using your email system's filter capability, poor email storage folder setups, plus our own 'email personality' are to blame. The book offers some tangible and very useful tips on what a reader might try differently. As for myself, I have used one of the methods for several days in a row and have so far achieved the holy grail of inbox-zero each day! I feel confident, that I can keep this up. Good by, cluttered inbox. Hello, productivity!
August 3, 2016
This book was a big disappointment for me. It wasn't well-planned, and strayed often from inbox-relevancy. The author is likely not a native English speaker, and the mis-use of English and otherwise poor writing made it an unfortunate read.
1 star.
1 star.
April 3, 2015
Sounds like an infomercial that goes on too long with lots of redundancy. Overall message is to get organized by moving emails from inbox/ not use it as storage. Inbox too full - suggests you are storing other people's agendas.
Part 1 is all intro. Part 2 - culture and behavior
Part 1 is all intro. Part 2 - culture and behavior
July 6, 2015
I'm going to recommend this book to a lot of people. I didn't use all of the tips and tricks in this book, but the ones I used helped me immensely.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews