Recently I have gotten a lot of questions about how it is possible that I have an empty e-mail inbox, both in private e-mail and in work email. In the last years I have developed a system that seems to work for me based on Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero idea and the whole ‘Getting Things Done’-mantra. For me this comes down to a few simple rules:

- my inbox is my ToDo list, if a message is still in my inbox it means I have to do something RAD with it

- ‘Doing something RAD’ can mean three things: Respond, Archive, Delete

- Respond: if a message requires a response and I can respond immediatly I will, sometimes it will take some time when it requires a longer response or when I deem the message to be not urgent.

- Archive: When I have responded to a message I archive the message in a folder (work) or I tag it and archive it (private/gmail). As long as the message has some valid information I archive it somewhere for whenever I might need it. This also explains my love for gmail (google for your domain) and it’s incredible search function. What really helps is if people use proper e-mail etiquette and and at least use descriptive subjects. Also flagging messages (Outlook) or adding a star to them (gmail) helps with archiving important messages.

- Delete: messages that are spam, bacn, or when there is no response necessary are deleted.

This way I see that if messages start buidling up in my inbox I know I have stuff to do. Some people might say that they have so much e-mail coming into their inbox that they can’t keep up, that’s where filters come in. In both Outlook and gmail I have set up filters that remove unimportant stuff from my inbox like administrative notifications (work) facebook or twitter notifications (private). Invest some time in setting up filters that catch stuff you don’t want to see immediatly.

On a final note, remember that e-mail is asynchronous communication, if people really need something from you immediatly let them give you a call, don’t build up expectations that you will answer every message instantly.