Important emails

should be

ugly, actionable & visible

I’ve read about this “Inbox Zero” thing for years. People who claim to sort out all their emails right away and maintain a zen-like state when it comes to taming the undying zombie that is your inbox. What I’ve since learned is that those people use labeling and search, a lot.

I’ve always taken these suggestions from self-described inbox aficionados with a grain of salt. They can’t really be practicing what they preach, right? Not too long ago, my inbox is in a nightmare state. In an effort to get “better” at it, I’ve adopted just about every methodology that exists, ranging from an equisite system of categorization, to an archive-everything system, to search-first system, and then back to categorization. What a mess.

It wasn’t until this year that I started to develop my own flavor of inbox management, which I call “Pocket-sized Inbox.” It’s easy to keep up with, easy to see what things require your attention, and keeps your inbox down to a reasonable handful of emails at any given time.