Trying to whittle down an inbox of 130 to 0 is intimidating. You can knock off 20 and it doesn’t feel like you made any progress. It would be useful if an email app had a “help you to get to inbox zero” mode where it would only show you 20 emails at a time. Once you knocked those out, 20 more fill in. This way you can see the progress you are making on a small scale (from 20 to 18 to 13 to 7 to 0) and stay motivated to keep knocking them out on a large scale.
mike
on 11 Mar 11i dont think this is a good idea.
I think it would make you feel like Sisyphus… remove 20 emails from your inbox, only to have all your progress wiped out and see 20 more, with no end in sight.
Btw- I am sitting on +27,000 unread emails. 130 is easy.
Chris Conrey
on 11 Mar 11Or you could just tackle it like you do anything else and get it done. The more emails shouldn’t dishearten you – just motivate you to get things done.
Don Schenck
on 11 Mar 11I guess my email earlier today didn’t help. Now I feel so guilty.
:)
Don Schenck
on 11 Mar 11What I would like is to be able to tag an incoming message to expire on a certain date.
Let me keep this for six months; If I don’t use it by then, it can go away.
Kinda like the “turn your hangers around” trick.
Russ Thornton
on 11 Mar 11A tool that’s helped me tame my inbox is www.nudgemail.com
Free, simple & works great with no registration required.
I know this post is about different ways to manage email volume, but using Nudgemail’s ability to “defer” emails to certain points in the future has helped me stay at or near inbox zero since I began using it.
Ian
on 11 Mar 11It’s called pagination.
hcabbos
on 11 Mar 11The Email Game is pretty cool: http://emailga.me/
Anonymous Coward
on 11 Mar 11@Ian, it’s not called pagination. With pagination as you knock things off, the list fills up one by one. You want the list to get smaller and then fill up again once it’s down to 0.
brad
on 11 Mar 11In Outlook (similar process works for Apple’s Mail App), I just drag any email that requires me to do something onto my Tasks bar to create a new task; I assign it a deadline (which automaticaly creates a reminder, which I can set to a few days before if necessary) and then file the email to my archive file. I have about 30 email in my in-box right now and 15,000 in my active archive; about 250,000 in my older archive files
The only things I keep in my in-box are emails that don’t have a clear task associated with them or that involve things I’m working on right now/have to be taken care of today.
If I had an inbox that only showed me 20 messages I’d worry that I was missing something important and/or urgent in the ones I’m not seeing.
Pete
on 11 Mar 11I’ve heard good things about this. Played with it some. It certainly has limitations but get’s close to Jason’s thoughts.
http://emailga.me/
Michael Gaigg
on 11 Mar 11Email needs an “answered” function. Half of my email (after coming back from a trip) is some sort of thread with multiple recipients that eventually got answered and doesn’t need my attention anymore. Same idea like “deals that expired”, why are they still in my inbox? ;) I could quickly disregard them or simply fly over them to get a status, or even better, check the answer&question.
Sean McCambridge
on 11 Mar 11It kind of works that way in Gmail with pagination. And it does feel like a Sisyphean task.
BUT—if they ever decide on a standard for email expiration dates, the unimportant ones would self-destruct and we would retain just a little bit of sanity in our email lives.
Anonymous Coward
on 11 Mar 11@37signals
Just set your email client to only display 20 emails.
DONE. (The “getting real” way).
Elliot
on 11 Mar 11I started working on an Inbox zero method a couple of years ago, and I think that it’s working pretty well. While I have never actually made it to zero (my inbox is my task list as well), I’ve handily made it from several thousand down to a constant 30-40 emails that I need to respond to.
@Michael Gaigg, Outlook allows you to sort by conversation, so you can see who’s said what. Outlook 2010 is even better at this. And my Gmail organizes by conversation as well.
Joe
on 11 Mar 11@hcabbos I was going to suggest making a game out of it, since then it’s still visible but you still get the feeling of accomplishment. Then I saw your reply. Good stuff.
Merle
on 11 Mar 11How about blinders for mowing your lawn? That way you could only see the row you were mowing. Am I brilliant?!
Paul Saunders
on 11 Mar 11That app wouldn’t work for me Jason. I always clear mine down by sender.
Michael Gaigg
on 11 Mar 11@Elliot: that’s true, but there is no explicit action that ‘solves’ the thread, kinda like meetings in outlook that get updated when something changes.
@Merle: genius, got those for sale? but seriously, i guess focus helps…
Peter Matuchniak
on 11 Mar 11The first time I managed a large project I was overwhelmed by over 100 emails a day and failing at my best efforts to process the list effectively.
So I came up with a process that has worked for me ever since…
I created simple rules that routed my emails into prioritized folders. Then I deal with each level at different times in the day based on those priorities. For example…
The top level priority folder contain emails sent directly to me and nobody else, so I figured that I have to respond immediately because no-one else can.
The second level priority folders contains emails to myself AND someone else. I deal with these a little later but still with some measure of urgency.
The remaining level priority folders contain emails where either I am on the cc-list (or worse, bcc). These tend to be the largest numbers of emails and usually the worst offenders of my valuable time. I find that I don’t really need to be on the ball with those and, besides, with so many on the email list there’s a good chance someone else will take charge of the subject matter. And that typically had happened by the time I read these emails later in the day, assuming I even got around to reading them at all.
It’s rare that these rules work against me, but when they do I find that the email sender gets my attention by walking to my office or picking up the phone - or, writing an email just to me and no-one else ;)
Richard
on 11 Mar 11Worthless quote. This assumes that all emails are equally important. I too am sitting on 10,000+ emails. Some need to be read. Some are automated. Some cc me but are about something I’m not interested in knowing about. Some I need to keep around in case I run into the problem later. My company does me a favor by auto-deleting emails over 1 year old. It’s still a monumental pile of emails.
Stuart Roseman
on 11 Mar 11Hi Jason,
SaneBox (http://SaneBox.com), my product is made for exactly this purpose. We automatically file unimportant emails into a 2nd folder we call SaneLater. This makes your INBOX way less daunting to process. It will have the subset of emails that you actually need to deal with immediately. We also have optional defer folders that causes emails you don’t have time for to disappear for a day or a week and then magically reappear in your INBOX. And you get a 30 day free trial so you could even sign up, clear out your INBOX, and cancel thereby avoiding paying us anything. Although obviously I hope you like the service well enough to stick around :-)
We also send you an activity report once a week with all sorts of interesting info about how much email you processed helping you stay motivated to have a clean INBOX.
Best Wishes, Stuart Roseman President/Founder Sanebox
Kevin
on 11 Mar 11Wow, what a bad idea.
Don Marti
on 11 Mar 11One trick: set up your system not to check for new mail unless the inbox count has gone down since last check:
http://sachachua.com/notebook/wiki/2007.04.13.php#anchor-1
Tony
on 11 Mar 11Is this a Merlin Mann reference?
You guys have eerie similarities:
37signals-——43folders
similar blog layout
similar books Rework-——-Back to Work
And now Inbox Zero
??
Stacy
on 11 Mar 11+1 thanks Peter. Gonna try your method.
Sam
on 11 Mar 11Pagination does this if you start at the last page and work your way forward, rather than starting at the beginning.
laura
on 11 Mar 11Bunch of great suggestions here.
I’d talk to your support staff about the best way to get through backlogs there. As someone who’s been through thousand+ ticket backlogs herself, I agree that separating and labeling is the best way to attack these kinds of queues. Sort by priority and topic and you can get through them quickly but keep your responses high quality.
As such, labels and routing seem the best way to tackle a large inbox queue.
If you have a team to help, all the better!
Anonymous Coward
on 11 Mar 11Has no one heart the thing called gmail ? Just search unread mails ( is:unread ) and read them, go back and read another. when you done click refresh….
I have respect what you done but, i think you guys @37Signals nowadays nothing to do and writing useless quotes because you’re bored ?
Dave
on 11 Mar 11This is possible with gmail. Set up some simple labels. Then use mutiple inboxes and limit it to 20.
Moah
on 11 Mar 11Hi Jason,
It seems like you’ve inadvertently written a spec for our product, how it works .
Would love to hear your feedback.
Moah
Dave
on 12 Mar 11I (try to) manually trim email daily to keep it manageable. I think the functionality you want to add would be used so seldom that most people wouldn’t remember that it’s even there. Unless it’s part of a huge ‘Clear Emails’ button in the apps tool bar.
Eric J. Gruber
on 12 Mar 11Kind of like the e-mail interface for Exchange, Google, etc. Or, as others have noted, pagination.
Morley
on 12 Mar 11It’s probably sufficient to just go through the last week’s worth of email and discard the rest. (Unless you have something useful to search for, like a project name or the word “payment.”) If it’s that important, the other person will probably follow up.
If you’re getting 130 a day, that’s pretty tough. Maybe using a mail client like Sparrow, which makes it easier to get the gist of a thread to make sure it’s important?
More than 130 important, must-answer emails a day probably means you need an assistant or a better definition of “must-answer.”
Marc
on 12 Mar 11In general love the blog, big fan, but not sure I like this idea. That being said my Inbox is a mess, so I obviously don’t have a fix myself.
Michael Parenteau
on 12 Mar 11So, I feel like it isn’t so much the total number as it is the noise around the important. With gmail, labeling seems to help with this… But I think it might be interesting if there was a “smarter” email inbox. Something that tracked usage behavior, number of in emails in time periods, reply history, unique emails, etc. – and then could keep a separate inbox that you could play with prioritization.
Yes, the goal would be to ultimately get the total down to zero… But I want to knock them out in an order that could prove more effective than going down the general list.
I also like how gmail chains emails together at times so 5 unread emails can be views at once and one reply can handle all of them.
You know what I mean?
Elevate the relevant email and put some email in a secondary state. This might make going through the list feel different from an experience point of view and maybe then reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed by volume alone.
Walt
on 12 Mar 11When I was a very small-for-my-age kid in junior high and high school I regularly kicked ass in the various yearly contests for sit-ups, chin-ups, stuff like that, despite my size.
My secret was simple – pick a number that I thought would win and count down from there. 150 is pretty easy to hit once you’ve hit 130 and your brain is telling you you’re at 20, with only 19 more to go. The opposite is a major crisis for some psychological reason.
Inbox is the same way – if you get behind, sort by “received from” and crank it out one group at a time. I get between 100 and 300 emails a day, this works for me.
As far as the guy with 27,000 unread emails, you wouldn’t work for me for very long, good luck with those work habits.
Steve
on 12 Mar 11If you’re getting 130 emails a day from within your immediate environment (work, friends, family etc) then I think you need to talk to people (or send them an email) about what you expect to be emailed about and what you consider to be spam. And then set up spam filters accordingly. If you miss out on something via email after this it probably isn’t that important – important stuff generally rises above the sea of nonsense email anyway.
Rodrigo Ferreira
on 12 Mar 11I’ve been used Cerberus (cerberusweb.com) and it’s just great. You can set up templates, reply to multiple e-mails by context, filter messages to different boxes, filter messages by sender with history control etc. Great software (I’m not related to them in any way; just a happy user).
Michael Kagan
on 12 Mar 11I am a big fan of ActiveInBox. This fellow does masterful job of using an email client (gmail) to serve as a core tool to integrate GTD priciples and techniques into (email) workflow
http://www.activeinboxhq.com/
ActiveInbox is a browser plugin for a better Gmail & Google Apps that helps you manage your email tasks. There is no new system to learn, it just uses Gmail labels.
nate
on 12 Mar 11my setup relies on simple mail rules to file stuff away in subfolders on arrival. if a filter doesn’t catch a message, chances are it’s from a new client or someone i don’t know, and i deal with it right away.
a couple of smart mailboxes in mail.app show me all mail received across all mailboxes for the past week or 30 days. that way, the inbox is always manageable. the smart mailboxes take its place as a way to see what’s current, and they update dynamically, so there’s nothing to clean out.
but you probably shouldn’t use mail as an organizational tool in the first place…
Austin Office Space Advisors
on 13 Mar 11It seems I am stuck with 275 +/- emails in my inbox every day. Having that many emails in my inbox on an ongoing basis is stressful. I try to knock down the list everyday however when I am away from my office they tend to accrue. Anybody have a good process that they follow?
Anthony Barone
on 14 Mar 11Jason, I’ve heard you say in that past e-mail is Basecamp’s greatest competition. Is this post intended to get insight to solve that problem? If so, I’ve been a customer of Basecamp since 2006. When I set up a project, a guideline is set to post messages vs. e-mail in order to always be up to date with the message. E-mail is an alert or notification tool only in this context.
ShallowRed
on 14 Mar 11Go to preferences and set the maximum conversations to 25 (Sorry, not 20), then just use priority or other marvels on gmail.
Deltaplan
on 14 Mar 11My personal strategy to deal with a 1000+ inbox is to sort the emails by sender.
That way, I have many consecutive emails that I can throw away immediately, just by looking at the sender, it helps me to quickly remove the most useless part of it, and to adjust my filters (spam, mailing-lists that I don’t really need, naggers…)
Thomas Blum
on 14 Mar 11It would be a nice feature indeed. It would be even nicer to have the emails grouped by sender.
Adam Fitzgerald
on 14 Mar 11Well the point of Inbox Zero is to make folders, so you can quickly sort your email. Then when you have some time, you can attack one of the folders.
I use folders like: action, respond, holding, archive, personal, readthis
Then I can skim 100 emails in an inbox to those folders in 10-15 mins. Then at any point, I can choose to hit the “respond” folder for example and knock out a bunch of replies in one sitting.
Keeps your main inbox clean, so you never feel overwhelmed.
37Signals is a big fan of ignoring feature requests until they bubble to the surface. Some emails work this way too :)
Jan Wencel
on 14 Mar 11Thanks for the introduction to emailga.me/. I think the decision-making process is great even for those who don’t use gmail.
As for a process @AustinOfficeSpaceAdvisors, here’s a free webinar I recorded a while back. http://tinyurl.com/4v6vndx May you find a good idea or two to help streamline your process. For instance, using www.x1.com so you can use a one-bucket archive approach & have confidence things can get found.
EH
on 14 Mar 11Oh god, not only are we getting “I’m a big fan of $thing_i_made,” but now we get the word “webinar” making an appearance. Click here to learn the ONE WEIRD OLD SECRET to keeping your inbox manageable!
Ben Kinnaird
on 14 Mar 11I agree that email certainly needs a helping hand to make things manageable but not sure Jason’s suggestion would help. But the idea of supporting a users focus would be good.
For me a big help would be to remove the read/unread status as really an email should remain prominent until it has been done, delegated or deleted/archived.
Also integration with HR and BC would be nice – I am assuming 37s are making us all the perfect email program right?
Anonymous Coward
on 17 Mar 11Is 130 really daunting?
Close your twitter feed, set your phone to silent, and spend 5 minutes taking care of business.
Or, sit around wishing your computer had insanely complicated features that 0.00000000001% of the population would ever use.
Anna
on 18 Mar 11Can you believe you got 50 comments on this post?
Clearly, email rules too many lives.
This discussion is closed.