Email Workflow with Zero Inbox

Productive, stress-free and motivating

I have been using “Zero Inbox” as a workflow for my email inboxes for a long time. The idea behind it is, as the name suggests, to keep the inbox of the mail program empty and not to use it as a task list, archive or similar.

What does Zero Inbox do for me?

One benefit that I find very practical is my increased productivity when processing emails. I can focus on the new, incoming emails and don’t see any old emails that have been sitting in my inbox for days, weeks or years shouting “Hey, I’m still here too”. After a few teething problems at the beginning, I have now managed to reduce the time I spend on email processing alone from 2-3 hours to around 1 hour per day. It also offers me a clean separation between emails and tasks/to-dos.

Looking back, however, it’s much more exciting: I no longer have to stress about emails. I know where to find what I need and what the status is. It also feels good to move or delete the last email from my inbox several times a day. This motivates me for the following tasks.

My workflow for Zero Inbox

In order to get through as efficiently as possible, I have established two framework conditions:

• Push notifications and automatic email retrieval are deactivated on all devices, i.e. emails are only retrieved when I open the mail program or the mail app. There’s a simple reason for this: I want to decide and have control over when I read emails and not be distracted by pop-ups, sounds or vibrations. I check my emails about every 2-4 hours when I have finished other tasks.
• Archive structure: There is no longer one. I’ve only been using one folder for years: “Archive”. As of today, this folder contains 12,627 emails. I can find everything I need using the search function and it’s quicker than in the folder structures I used to set up.
• With a few exceptions, I have unsubscribed from most newsletters. For blogs, I use RSS to find out about new posts.

Now when I check my emails, I check and process all incoming emails:

1. advertising, unimportant information: is deleted immediately
2. important information: I read it and move it to the archive folder
3. emails that need to be processed/replied to quickly: I process them immediately
4. mails that require more time or contain other tasks: I forward them to my task management (my to-do list) and move the mail to the archive or delete it.
5. emails that contain tasks for others or that others can solve better, I forward and then archive or delete them. I hardly ever use follow-ups. If I do, then as a task in my to-do list. But no markers, flags or anything else in the mail program.

Voilà, the inbox is empty. That usually takes me 5-15 minutes. Without email stress, but with the good feeling of having done something efficiently.