Clear & Empty Inbox In Less Than 5 Days
by Bappy Golder
I forgot what it was like to have an empty inbox for a few years. If you are a student, friend of some, running a business, use social media or have a combination of any of these you probably don't have an empty inbox either. I had over 400 unread messages in my inbox just 5 days ago. It kept growing for a few years. I have an empty inbox now.
How I did it?
It didn't start with a plan. I was a snowed down with lots of ToDos and emails. I decided to start marking some emails as read one evening. After about 3 days I now have an empty inbox. Now how did that happen?
Here are the steps that made it possible for me:
And that's about it. I was finished much faster than I thought I would. It is very rewarding.
Here are the steps that made it possible for me:
- Decided I needed to go through my emails.
- Marked all the social, promotional and unimportant emails as read.
- Used special search function is:unread "keyword" in Gmail to go through all the unread messages.
- Use combinations of various inbox display to go through emails quickly.
- Take Action: I dealt with the emails that requires something done.
And that's about it. I was finished much faster than I thought I would. It is very rewarding.
1. Make The Decision
A decision is the start of everything. This is the most important part for getting anything done. You need to truly decide that you want to do something. In my case I didn't decide I was going to do it until I marked about 50 social email as read in one go. Once I did that, I was motivated to do it the next day as well. That was enough to keep me motivated to do it once everyday. Challenge yourself to spend some time with your emails at least 2 days in a row. Once you do the first 2 days you will be able to increase it to 3, 4 and more days.
2. Mark The Social & Promotional Emails As Read
Most of the emails we receive are unimportant: advertising, social media updates, forum replies, unwanted news letters etc. They keep us from focusing on the important ones. You can safely mark all of these as read without even having to open any.
If you use Gmail, hover over your inbox > then from the drop down arrow select Default. This will allow you to see all your emails in various tabs. When you can see the tabs > go to the all the tabs (Social, Promotional, Updates and Forums) and mark as many emails as possible as read except in the Primary tab.
If you use Gmail, hover over your inbox > then from the drop down arrow select Default. This will allow you to see all your emails in various tabs. When you can see the tabs > go to the all the tabs (Social, Promotional, Updates and Forums) and mark as many emails as possible as read except in the Primary tab.
3. Use special syntax is:unread "keyword"
Hover over your inbox again and from the drop-down selection select "Unread first". Once done > In the search box of your Gmail in box type is:unread then space and the keyword you are looking for in your message like: facebook or twitter or google+ etc. You can also type in the name of a person (or anything else) as keywords.
What you are telling Gmail, is that you want to see all the emails that is unread and have the keyword you entered. Here is one example of what I searched (without any quotes): "is:unread meetup". Then press search. When you see all the unread emails from meetup keep marking as unread, until finished. If you don't know what keyword to put in, then have a look at your unread messages and choose keywords from their title or body.
What you are telling Gmail, is that you want to see all the emails that is unread and have the keyword you entered. Here is one example of what I searched (without any quotes): "is:unread meetup". Then press search. When you see all the unread emails from meetup keep marking as unread, until finished. If you don't know what keyword to put in, then have a look at your unread messages and choose keywords from their title or body.
4. Use Various Inbox Display To Go Through Emails Quickly
In Gmail you can change how you view your inbox. You can take advantage of this and read through your emails very quickly. My favourite is priority inbox mode. This shows me the important emails first and then the unread once. When I want to go through emails fast, I use various combination of inbox display to go through emails quickly. You can always change these views/display as many times as you want.
5. Take action
This is the last but one of the most important part. This part is what make us procrastinate and put off doing anything with emails. However if you have marked all your unnecessary emails as read, you will be left with only few important ones. When I was done at the end of my third day I was left with only 10 emails that required me to take some actions. These are actions such as:
This is the hardest part because every action takes a lot more time than we are prepared to spend. One of my last 10 emails took me about 3 hours to reply. I needed to write an email, do some research, do some financial transaction and then send the reply. If I didn't have specific time for action emails I would never have gotten around to replying to this email.
- Reply to the email
- Mark a date in the calender
- Do some financial transaction
- Do some course work etc.
This is the hardest part because every action takes a lot more time than we are prepared to spend. One of my last 10 emails took me about 3 hours to reply. I needed to write an email, do some research, do some financial transaction and then send the reply. If I didn't have specific time for action emails I would never have gotten around to replying to this email.
Read Emails When You Have Time to Take Actions
I decided to take action on 5 emails a day. I do it every morning with when I am not distracted. Trying to go through emails when we don't have time to deal with them is not a good idea. I used to end up marking those emails as unread with a hope for dealing with it another time. That another time never comes. So I decided to go through some action emails everyday when I have time to deal with them.
Keeping On Top Of Emails
Keeping the inbox empty is another challenge. It has been 15 days since I empted my inbox and I still have an empty inbox. I am checking emails most morning with some exceptions. I now want to bring back my old hobbit of writing emails to people who matters to me.
Have a question or comment, join the discussion through any of the social media.
Have a question or comment, join the discussion through any of the social media.
Last Updated: 10 May 2014
FIRST PUBLISHED: 25 Apr 2014
TOPIC/TAGS: EMAIL, INBOX
