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-   -   Inbox Zero & Email management tips (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/172406-inbox-zero-email-management-tips-2.html)

When I say - first thing in the morning I mean waking up and checking emails on phone. Had this horrible habit, no more now. I check only those emails first thing in office, when its marked urgent.

I have the content in the latest reply which I gave. I see no point in keeping the original mail. I just like to keep a low footprint as possible. Guess it is a carry over from my gaming days. Logically, what you said: makes more sense. Storage is cheap.

Eventually, yes. Immediately, no.

Over time, my email reading priority has evolved to 'Addressed to me', 'Conversations including me' and 'someone went berserk with Reply All', in that order:). 1st gets done mornings, 2nd through the day and last during a short 'clear spam/junk email' break.

Frankly, I don't think there's any advantage of having a Zero inbox today. This made sense 10 years ago when searching was in its infancy. Now, both the web based clients (like gmail), desktop clients (eg. Mozilla thunderbird), and Android clients (eg. K9 mail) offer seamless and quick searches.

For example, this is my office inbox:


And I have no problem searching exactly what I want! So a huge inbox 'clutter' is just a state of mind:D

Inbox zero by close of business sustained only for 'priority inbox'

Thanks to mindset and our general work culture, all the more important to avoid email shocks over the weekend (including senseless text messages saying I've sent you a mail :Frustrati)

I hear you, I hear you!

Each & every day, without fail, I have to go through annoying calls from the PR arms of car manufacturers. It goes like this:

Cellphone rings....usually an unknown number (Truecaller gives the organisation name only).

Me - Hello.

Sweet voice at the other end (99% of the time, it's a female voice) - 'Hi Rush, I'm xxxx on behalf of xxxx motors. I've just sent you a press release. Wanted to confirm that you got it?'.

Me - :Frustrati

Me - 'Did you get a bounce back notification?'

Sweet voice - Shocked (not the answer she was expecting). 'Umm, no'.

Me - 'Then I've obviously gotten it. You sent it, I got it. That's how email works'.

Sweet voice - 'Ok, thanks'. Hangs up. Hurriedly moves on to her next bakra. These are generally entry-level PR personnel working their way up the ladder.

It has become terribly ANNOYING. The 'calling after emailing' practice started in 2014 and EVERY car manufacturer now follows it. I receive about 15 - 20 press releases a day. You can imagine the frustration.

Solution - Add them all to a common contact called 'PR Idiots' and block that contact :D. I religiously block all PR numbers. Since I don't answer, they always reach my voicemail. It's a different matter that 99% of Indians don't have a clue about what to do once you reach someone's voicemail.

Result - PR spam calls cut down by 90%!!!

Enough of the off-topic rant. Let's get back to discussing Inbox Zero.

Since couple days I am scratching my head about this zero inbox concept, never heard of this before. I even watched the video until I could keep my eyes open. :) The only thing I can relate to his experience is I started using email in the same year as him.

I agree with PearlJam, I don't see the advantage of having zero inbox. I let Gmail categorize my emails, and I ensure that I read the emails in Primary tab. Rest of the tabs are not important, I would browse them once a day if I am expecting something, otherwise I just ignore. I don't delete emails after reading either, because I often have to search for old things later.



The category feature in Gmail works very well for me. Rarely an important email goes into other categories, if they do and if I find them, I push it to primary. Next time it goes to the right place. I also use the threading feature to keep all the related emails together.

These days we get way too many emails in the form of notifications and FYI, not to mention advertisements and spam. We don't need to read everything. Just use a smart email system that can sort out the incoming emails and shows what you really need to read. Rest is noise. Therefore, I moved the company email to Google Apps back few years ago, and never looked back.

For me every email is not a transaction that must be handled. If it is a query addressed to me, I will answer. If it is FYI, I may or may not answer. If it is not addressed to me, and if I have something to contribute, I might answer. I won't turn it into some rigid process that will control my life.

Haven't these cavemen heard of 'read receipts'? Calling up people to confirm if they got an email is probably the most absurd thing I've heard in a long time.

Sums up my own current POV pretty well:thumbs up

It's increasingly becoming impossible to hit Inbox ZERO from an 'all emails attended to' perspective, and probably pointless as email clients get smarter. It's all about 'all emails categorized' for me now. I'll then pick & choose what I want to do with each bunch, including 'nothing' for some.

Just wandering, if there are mail apps that can block PR/marketing/spam emails, (like Phonewarrior and Truecaller), for mails ?

I agree!! But it is a matter of choice really. Some people like e-mails to be neat and clean and spend quite a lot of time to keep it that way. I used to do that with my Yahoo account earlier. Now I have switched over to gmail which is way too good in handling spams and categorizing incoming mails properly. I just do a search and bulk delete once in two months or so.
At work where it is outlook, I create specific "rules" or "filters" to keep support (automated mails from systems) mails in a separate folder. BTW, outlook search really sucks. MS should think about changing that else gmail could start taking over office communication.
More than the clutter, I worry about important mails that I would miss. I would rather keep the clutter than delete some important mail inadvertently.

In my initial days of career, I had this habit of checking/replying mails every now and then, even at night if I woke up for nature's call, but then, as time progressed it started taking a toll on my mental health. Moreover, my seniors/ colleagues started assuming that I am available 24/7 for even the tiniest of matters and expecting quick replies. Times changed and then I got married ! Mail management is officially out of the window.

Thanks to smartphones, no mail goes unread now-a-days.
My philosophy about mailbox is that I don't have to arrange it neatly unless it is important. So far it has worked. Important mails, read and move to a folder. I create relevant folders every time something new comes up, say ITR 2015-16, everything that comes related to ITR is moved to that folder. If its some irrelevant mail I don't move it anywhere, once it auto-archives, it goes off anyway. This approach works best with gmail where every hour someone is offering me a job, a home loan, a best deal on some gadget or even a new wife ! Mail search with gmail is excellent so I dont worry about the clutter it has.

More than mail management, I've realized that it is important to secure your emails as they contain some really confidential data. I urge every team-bhpian to have that two step login mechanism where you get a OTP on your cell phone. Also secure your cell phone with lock codes or whatever security feature available.

This is exactly what I have- both in my office inbox as well as in gmail. Anything i need is in my finger tips with a quick search/sort or a mix of it along with a ctrl+f in gmail page ("/" keyboard shortcut in gmail is a boon and heavily used one) or else in outlook it is a ctrl+shift+f with so many other filters if need be. Has always been fast for me. The only segregation i do is perhaps in outlook where once inbox reaches 5k or 10k mails i move into a folder by its time period range say a q1,q2 etc with year in it. And yes, on the topic- my inbox will always have 0 after every check of it. To be replied once are either replied +sent immediately or replied+in draft folder which is cleared as quick as possible.

Absolutely right. I do not see a reason to be happy in seeing an empty inbox OR the other way.

Today with multiple accounts / multiple devices / excellent search engines, One can literally do what one wants. There is nothing like - "This is the best way". It also depends on what type of profession we are into and what our day-to-day requirements are. Useless to generalize these things.

IMO, this discussion can be best termed as "What do you do" than "What is the right / best way".

Yes. Only thing that I personally bother about is the Junk-mails. I use filters for it. I also use "High Priority" and "Star" when ever required.

Few years ago I came across the article below; quite effective at email management:
https://support.office.com/en-us/art...a-9f6da648cca2

I also like to keep my inbox empty, lots of PSTs in Outlook by various classifications. I do use conversation view all along across all folders, helps me ensure that I am replying to latest on the thread.

Great looking inbox there, GTO! One that I can only dream of.

For gmail one should use the dot trick/feature as a filter. For example use xyz at gmail dot com as the contact for work E-Mails, xy.z at gmail for subscriptions and x.yz for promotions/shopping ones. Interestingly all of these will direct to the same ID xyz at gmail, but this will allow one to set up filters based on the address to segregate them

There are also some tools like unroll.me which organizes all the promotions/subscriptions and categorizes them in folders rather than cluttering up the inbox