images1I’ve noticed recently  that people in my Twitter stream have been saying things like, “Email Inbox empty!” And I have laughed my head off. The notion of an EMPTY email box is like… incomprehensible to me. I probably have a total of fifteen thousand emails sitting around in my computer. So I started asking around, “What do you MEAN?” and “How do you DO that?” The wonderful Vicki turned me on to the system designed by Lifehacker.

Basically, the idea is that you should only have three options for any piece of incoming mail: Archive (stuff you want to keep, for any reason), Followup (stuff that needs attention that you can’t deal with immediately), and Hold (for things that you will need access to in the very near future).

Here’s the drill. 

  • If it requires a response or action which will take less than one minute to complete, do it on the spot, then move the message to Archive.
  • If it requires an action on your part that will take more than one minute to complete, move it to the Follow Up folder.
  • If it’s a piece of information or a promise you’re waiting on from someone else, move it to Hold.
  • If it’s an informational message you may want to refer to later, move it to Archive.
  • If it’s of no use, delete it.

Wash, rinse and repeat for every message in your inbox until it is completely empty.

I have to admit that I was very skeptical. I had nearly SEVEN THOUSAND emails in my personal Inbox, dating from late 2006. I am not kidding (and that was just for ONE account; I also have over six thousand for my work email). But once I started this system, starting chronologically with the oldest ones, I got very addicted. After zipping through 3,000 emails, I only had “archived” 200; only 6% of my emails were actually worth keeping. The vast majority of emails I deleted said things like, “OK thanks, see you at 1!” and the like. But they were so jumbled up with my other emails that I really didn’t know what was important and what wasn’t. 

It’s my favorite thing to do with a little downtime now (yeah, almost as fun as Facebook Scrabble!) – I blast through my Inbox and sort away. It’s very liberating.

I have struggled with holding on to too much stuff in basically every arena of my life, so to find this method that is so easy and effective has made me very happy. Next stop on the sort and purge train: my office.