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by Gretchen Louise · 6 Comments

Slaying the Email Dragon

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Gone are the days of email’s infancy when “You’ve got mail!” was a delightful and potentially romantic announcement. Now just the two words “email inbox” put together in a sentence are enough to make anyone, regardless of profession, break out into a cold sweat.

If you’re like me, you had almost given upon reading the posts about this email system or that methodology that would save your email inbox. After all, every one I tried worked for about two days. Until the weekend hit and my inbox was slammed and I never quite got back out from under it.

But one day I asked a question on Twitter that led me to the Inbox Zero video. And while my inbox still isn’t staying at zero, it is staying at a more reasonable and manageable amount than it ever has been before–despite the fact that I’m getting more emails than ever these days.

So how did I slay the email dragon and get back on top of my inbox? Here are my four sanity-saving secrets.

How did I slay the email dragon and get back on top of my inbox? Here are 4 sanity-saving secrets.

1. Declare inbox bankruptcy.

Those 1,729 emails in your inbox? They probably aren’t earth-shattering if you’ve left them there that long. Archive them. (Yes, I really had that many in one of my four inboxes. And yes, I archived them. Every single one.) Declare inbox bankruptcy and start over.

2. Use archives, not folders.

Truly. Forget the 101 folders with the perfect hierarchy. Deciding which one to file the email away in takes time, expanding the folder and dragging the email in there takes more time. If the email requires no more action from you, either Archive it or Delete it. In Gmail, what you delete will be gone forever (in 30 days or less your trash will automatically be emptied). Archived items are easy to find through Gmail’s quick (and smart!) search function. There’s no need to use a folder when searching is faster.

3. Unsubscribe, ruthlessly.

Before you hit delete on those emails that keep pouring into your inbox, ask yourself if you can just unsubscribe. If you’re never reading the email, or if the information can be easily found elsewhere, unsubscribe. Use Feedly for the blogs you follow. Keep your email subscriptions to those that you actually look forward to and almost always read in detail. And even for those, use Gmail’s Tabs to keep your subscriptions separate from your important messages or try Unroll.me for a daily digest instead of your subscriptions.

4.  Don’t just check your email; process it.

The internet-famous Inbox Zero video reminds us that we can spend all day just checking our email, rather than actually replying to it. Turn off notifications if necessary, so that when you sit down to your email you will take the time to actually process it. Reply, delegate, forward—do whatever you need to do with the email that can be done in three minutes or less—then archive it and be done. For the emails that require a longer reply or action, schedule a chunk of time or take them one by one as time allows. Whatever you do, don’t spend all day reading your email without doing anything about it.

So tell me, what’s your secret to keeping your inbox at (or near) zero?

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Posted in Email, Tutorials on August 27, 2013 (Last Updated June 25, 2019)

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Words from More Digital Wordsmiths

  1. Laura Lane of Harvest Lane Cottage says

    September 2, 2013 at 6:26 am

    Hi Gretchen Louise,

    I appreciate your post. I’ve never heard of archiving e-mail before. Is that different than filing it? It seems that it is from your post.

    Blessings,
    Laura
    Harvest Lane Cottage

    Reply
    • Gretchen Louise says

      September 4, 2013 at 9:59 am

      It’s different in that archiving is one click–it “files” it in your archive folder. It’s the same in that it still goes into a file, but everything goes into one rather than having multiple files.

      Reply
  2. Nikki @ Christian Mommy Blogger says

    August 27, 2013 at 5:24 am

    Hey Gretchen! Thanks for these tips. I seriously have an out of control inbox. I love getting all of the emails but I struggle with managing them! These should help. JUST ARCHIVE 🙂 Thanks for sharing our post too!

    Reply
    • Gretchen Louise says

      September 7, 2013 at 8:20 pm

      I’m glad the tips helped! Just archiving has made such a difference.

      And I was thrilled to see your post because I knew it would be a great additional resource on the topic. 🙂

      Reply

Words About These Words

  1. Realizing you can’t do it all (on reprioritizing, restrategizing, and taking scissors to my schedule) | Beautiful In His Time says:
    September 5, 2013 at 11:29 am

    […] cleaned out my email and “blogs to read” inbox and am trying to maintain a zero balance on both of those by dealing with emails and reading blogs […]

    Reply
  2. My Blogging Weaknesses {Revealed} – NEED PICTURE - Christian Mommy Blogger says:
    September 2, 2013 at 4:00 am

    […] inbox. It was a good start. Then I got a pingback for a post from the lovely Gretchen Louise about slaying the email dragon. The post title caught my eye and I thought…that is a great way to describe my inbox. A […]

    Reply

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