Prelude Interactive

My email management process is a source of pride.  It’s not the best in the world, but it works very well for me.  It borrows a lot from Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero ouvre, and I’m sure many more neat tricks have been implemented by the community than by moi.

• It all starts with GMail.  There are other good webmail applications, but GMail is very, very good and I have never been tempted by the fruit of another.  Because GMail’s search is so good, I almost don’t have to organize my mail at all.
• I funnel about a half dozen email addresses into a single GMail inbox.  Go to Settings -> Accounts and Import.  I also have each of these addresses as “Send mail as:” addresses too, which requires a confirmation step after you set up your POP3 settings.  The POP3 mailboxes only update once an hour or so, which is fine with me.  I’m not in any hurry.
• I created one Filter/Label combo to rule them all:  “00 Inbox”.  I wanted something other than the default “Inbox” label, becaues GMail wants to do special things with it that I don’t.  Also, the two leading zeros means it’s always sorted alphabetically at the top of my labels.  Every email gets this label.  I have other labels that I use manually for stuff like making a resume pile, stuff I want to save for certain clients, that kind of thing.  But 00 Inbox is the important one.
• I use hotkeys, K, J, N, M, X, Y, # and others to rapidly work with new emails in 00 Inbox.  I’m ruthless. I remove the label on anything that I don’t need to care about or respond to.  Overnight cron output, email marketing, anything from David J. Neff, threads I’m not directly participating in, all get the ol’ K/J(moving to the message), X (selecting the message), and Y (removing the message’s label) treatment.
• Once the 00 Inbox label is gone from a message, I know I don’t need to worry about it anymore.  It’s still saved, it’s still searchable, but it is no longer a source of stress.
• The Goal:  Have zero messages with the 00 Inbox label. This way I know that I don’t need to respond to anything in GMail.
• My GMail bookmarks take me directly to the view of the 00 Inbox label: http://mail.google.com/mail/#label/00+Inbox Saves one click.
• If a message hangs around in 00 Inbox all day, and then into the next day, I know I’m avoiding it.  It’s time to respond with something, or make the decision that I never intend to respond.

These are some other things I’ve picked up along the way:

• If you don’t like receiving email, don’t send it.  The more you send, the more you get.
• The more rapidly you respond to something, the more urgency the recipient will feel to return the favor.
• I funnel my voicemail messages to Google Voice, which in turn delivers a text version to 00 Inbox.  They may not be intelligible, but it saves 2 minutes checking my voicemail to see who that call was from and approximately how important their message is.
• I used to have a label called “Later” which is where things from “00 Inbox” would go when I was tired of looking at them.  I renamed this label “Never” and then deleted it.
• I’m only able to actually achieve Inbox Zero a couple times a week, at best, but I end just about every workday below “Inbox 10″ or so.  There are always a few emails that I’m waiting on for one reason or another.

It’s easiest to get to “Inbox Zero” when you start from something close to zero.  So, if curious, your steps should be to implement such an inbox/label, use it, get in the habit, and stay in the habit.