By Steve Endow
Uncle. I give up. I have lost the fight.
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Email has won. I admit defeat.
Email, once an excellent communication tool, has become an overwhelming burden, destroying my productivity.
I get 50-75 emails every weekday, sometimes hitting 100. For me, 100 emails daily are unmanageable. My current systems (or lack thereof) can’t handle this volume. Responding to and managing tasks from 100 emails stop me from getting anything else done.
If I dedicated my entire day to managing email, I might control my inbox, but no “real work” would get done. Focusing on actual work and ignoring email for a day leads to an exploding inbox.
It’s not just the emails; it’s the attached commitments:
“Hey Steve, can you analyze this 30-reply thread and share your thoughts?” “Here’s a 15-page document I wrote; please proofread it.” “When can we schedule a call?” “We’re getting an error. What’s causing it?” “Do these links explain the error I’m getting?” “How long will X take you?” “Did you receive my previous email? Can you reply?”
People seem to expect prompt replies, assuming their request is top priority and I have no other work.
This week, a link to this article popped up on my Twitter feed:
One-Touch to Inbox Zero By Tiago Forte of Forte Labs
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I knew about Inbox Zero but dismissed it as a gimmick.
Tiago Forte’s article finally made it click. His examples and emphasis on email as the first step in a broader productivity system helped me understand Inbox Zero differently.
I used to see email as the problem, but now I believe my overflowing inbox is a symptom of deeper issues:
- I lack email organization – no system to handle the deluge.
- I’m using email as an organizational tool, which is ineffective.
- I likely have a capacity issue. Implementing Inbox Zero might overload my task list, but that’s good. It reveals the capacity problem instead of blaming email volume.
The article proposes a simple but strict workflow for managing inbox emails:
The inbox isn’t a workspace; it’s where emails arrive and get sorted. You don’t stand at your mailbox to pay bills or read magazines; similarly, don’t work on emails from your inbox. Just like you collect mail from your mailbox, remove emails from your inbox and deal with them elsewhere.
Got it.
Following the article, I cleared my inbox, leaving 149 emails needing attention. I moved these to a temporary “To Do” folder, feeling accomplished with an empty inbox.
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Next, I set up the “four downstream systems” supporting the workflow:
- Calendar
- Task
- Reference
- Read Later
Here’s the workflow:
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The challenge was adapting his GMail and OS X-based system to my Outlook (MS Exchange) on Windows, iPhone, and OneNote environment.
Here’s my setup:
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- Outlook 2016 Mail (synced with iOS Mail)
- Outlook Calendar (synced with iOS Calendar)
- Outlook Tasks (synced with iOS Reminders)
- OneNote (synced with OneNote app)
- Pocket (browser extension and app)
Pocket’s free version has ads, so I might switch to Instapaper or pay for premium.
To streamline the workflow’s six steps, I created shortcuts:
Outlook 2016 lacks custom shortcuts but allows “Quick Steps” (CTRL+SHIFT+ (0-9)).
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I created four Quick Steps (flows 1, 3, 4, 6):
Archive (CTRL+SHIFT+9): Moves selected email to my archive folder (I search instead of using categories).
Reply (CTRL+R, CTRL+SHIFT+R): Standard Outlook shortcuts.
Add to Calendar (CTRL+SHIFT+8): Creates an appointment with the email text in the body.
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Add Task (CTRL+SHIFT+7): Creates a task and attaches the email.
Add to Reference: Uses the existing “Add to OneNote” button.
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Read Later (CTRL+SHIFT+6): Forwards the email to add@getpocket.com, adding the first URL to my reading list.
After using flows 2-6, immediately move the email to my “1 Read” subfolder.
Caveats:
Tasks: I’m unfamiliar with Outlook Tasks and iOS Reminders. Using tasks for emails might make tasks my primary focus.
Outlook Tasks lacks clear sorting, so I added the “Created Date” column.
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I need to figure out task prioritization and re-sorting.
iOS Reminders’ task order doesn’t always match Outlook, and it lacks detailed task views and attached emails.
iOS Limitations: The workflow primarily works on Windows.
iPhone lacks options to create Calendar events or tasks from emails or send emails to OneNote.
I can only send web pages from Safari to OneNote and Pocket and forward emails to Pocket.
Besides setting up flows, I changed my Outlook inbox to sort messages by date ascending (oldest to newest) and enabled threading (“Show as Conversations”).
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I made similar changes on my iPhone:
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Theoretically, these six steps allow for rapid inbox processing, keeping it empty.
Concerns:
- Email replies can be time-consuming. I need criteria for replying directly from the inbox (short replies only? Time limits?).
- What happens if my task list keeps growing from converted emails? Will I face the same capacity issues?
Despite these concerns, it’s a good start. Now, I need to process the 149 emails in my temporary folder.
Have you implemented Inbox Zero? How does it differ from this process? Any other tips for managing email and boosting productivity?
Update 1 - 1/1/2018:
iPhone Email Sorting: Disabling “Most Recent Messages on Top” didn’t change the main sort order (newest still on top). Another iOS limitation.
Read Later: I’m switching from Pocket to Instapaper due to distracting ads and a cluttered app. Instapaper also supports text highlighting, which I want to try.
Android: Since One-Touch Inbox Zero is limited on iOS, I’m exploring its feasibility on Android. A future post will cover my findings.