ZeronessHow to get to inbox zero, and stay there.
Inbox zero is not an empty mailbox. It is an inbox that holds nothing you have not already decided about. Here is the method we built Zeroness around, and it works in any email app.
1. Decide once, then act
Every email gets one decision the first time you open it. Re-reading the same message three times is what makes email feel endless. If you cannot decide now, that is a decision too: set a time to come back.
2. Use four actions, and only four
- Done: nothing more to do. Archive it. It stays searchable.
- Reply: if it takes under two minutes, answer now.
- Remind me: it needs you, but later. Pick a specific time, not “someday”.
- Waiting: you asked someone for something. Set a follow-up if they do not answer in a few days.
3. Clear the backlog in one pass
If you have thousands of emails, do not work through them one by one. Archive everything older than two weeks that is read and not starred, then work only the recent mail. Anything important from the old pile will reach you again. In Zeroness this step reads each thread instead of using the date, so a conversation still waiting on you stays even if it is old.
4. Keep the inbox for people
Most email is newsletters, receipts and notifications. Give them their own place so they never sit between you and a person waiting on an answer. Unsubscribe from anything you skip three times in a row.
5. Work in two or three sessions a day
Checking email every few minutes means deciding the same things over and over. Pick two or three times a day, go to zero each time, and close the app in between.
6. Let the drafts start themselves
The slowest emails are the ones you have to write from scratch. A good first draft, which you edit rather than write, turns a five-minute reply into a thirty-second one. Zeroness writes those drafts for threads where someone is waiting on you.