Open question: What's the point of inbox zero? | Hacker News Reader

Open question: What's the point of inbox zero?

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12 pointsZeroMinx27 comments

I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum of the author-I don't understand those who don't practice inbox zero. My personal view is that if a certain volume of mail starts to become overwhelming, or if I can easily leave it and not suffer any bad effects, I should unsubscribe. I don't act on every single email I get in, and if I'm going to put it off for now but know I need to remember to do it, I will read it and then 'star' it. Occasionally, I will mark the top email as unread because I know I will see it again that way.

I practice "unread zero". I leave emails in my inbox in case I need them later. The search function works well. If they are not marked "unread", I don't pay attention to them thus my brain does not see it as clutter.

That's pretty much what I do - I read emails I get fairly quickly, I get very little spam and I can find things through search far more easily than people I know who obsessively file and/or categorize things.

NB My Inbox has 16010 items in it ;-)

i have 19,452 messages in my inbox right now. I'm mildly OCD but my brain doesn't register this as clutter, either.

I think it's because of search. I know I can find something when I need it because everything is in one place, on one server, regularly backed up to 3 different locations.

My inbox (work - personal is full of 'like to read one day stuff') represents how cluttered my mind is. If it's above 30 messages, then I'm not in control of work. I don't aim for zero on a regular basis, but like it to be below 10.

Currently at 82 items ... and I'm dual procrastinating on HN and BBC iPlayer. Hmmm...

I hear you. I used to receive > 100 emails a day — some automated, but most thanks to Cc and mailing lists. I'd either read them in batches, or file them for 'later'. As long as that 'later' list was under ~10, I was in control.

For my personal mailbox, keeping it under 5 is usually enough. I typically keep cell phone/web server/etc bills in there until they're paid, and emails about photo-shoots in there until the work is completed.

That's pretty much how mine works as well. Once things start accumulating to the point where I don't even try to get it down for a few days (200+ messages), it pretty much means that I'm not in control at the moment. Conversely, actually getting it down below 20 or so (even if it means saying: "I'm not even going to bother pretending that I'm going to follow up on most of these") it really helps to clear my mind and make me more effective.

And three hours later I'm down to 35. Thanks again HN for practical support!

The point of inbox zero is a feeling of getting things done and getting positive reinforcement form it, as well as an information organizing method: what's in your inbox is (part of) your ToDo list. Like joshklein I do not bother with moving messages out of inbox - for me they are just a stream. However I mark with a star (in gmail), flag (in Outlook) or mark as unread all the messages that require follow-up action I did not do immediately. And sometimes I do a wholesale archiving, and only in short moments after that my inbox is zero or near that.

It all depends on your mental model. I, for instance, don't archive my messages; once they are marked as read in the inbox, I'm done with them. The point of inbox zero is, I believe, just to separate the place you organize your overall actions from the place you find out about new actions. When you combine the two, as a busy person, you just hold too much information in your head that could easily be taken care of by a system you can abide by.

When I started doing inbox zero, I actually spent much, much less time on email. An email you leave in your inbox costs you mental energy every time you see it. An email you deal with immediately costs you only once.

Also learning to use the gmail shortcuts J, K, <enter>, X, Y (or E), C, shift-I, *-A, and G-I was very helpful. You can type ? from the gmail home screen to see the shortcuts. Try it out!

1. Its not that hard to get to zero if you know the keyboard shortcuts to Gmail: use 'J' and 'K' to move between messages and 'Y' to archive. If you're in list view, 'X' highlights the message so 'XY' will archive things very very quickly.

2. Liberal use of autoarchive for high volume mailing lists that I don't need to be continuously updated on. I'll clear those folders out every once in a while.

3. Boomerang is a great tool that lets you temporarily archive a message. It will come back to the Inbox when you tell it to, so you can put stuff you don't have to act on for a while away and stay near zero with it:

http://www.boomeranggmail.com/

(I am not affiliated with Boomerang.)

Apart from some mailing list, which bypasses the inbox, I always want to get unread messages read. If it's junk I'll delete, if it's something I need to action later, I'll star it (gmail). I just don't want to see "Unread messages"..

I try to keep my main (work) inbox down to zero unread messages or as close to as possible. It has anything that's important, that I need to reply to with some urgency. All of the cruft (mailing lists, people I don't explicitly deal with regularly, people I've never received messages from before) goes elsewhere.

I only check email several times a day, at the start of the day I prioritise and schedule tasks based on emails, then later on I respond in batch, then check again in the afternoon and respond in batch before going home. It frustrates some people, but given that I actually get stuff done, the alternative is far worse.

My inbox is every email conversation that isn't archived. It is a list of items awaiting action from me. (Just because an email has been read doesn't mean it doesn't require action from me.) If it no longer requires action from me, then I archive it. Thus the inbox is a portion of my global "to do" list and represents, in a very real way, the amount of Stuff that I need to worry about at any given time.

I had no idea that "do all of the Stuff that you need to do" had such a fancy name, or was worth writing a book around.

Aiming for zero is fine. Expecting to achieve it is impractical, of course. We all have Stuff to do.

Email for me is something to be processed. If it doesn't need my attention and response, I try to filter it so it doesn't reach my inbox.

In contrast, my facebook stream is a diverse collection of stuff from people I care about that may interest me and which I peruse every once in a while. HN is kind of in the same category, except that HN content tends to be longer and more impersonal.

People are different.

Is that really so hard to fathom? You may not get IB0, you may not be capable of "getting" IB0. It's ok.

A couple points...

- An inbox zero usually loads faster

- An empty inbox allows to concentrate on real work items rather than searching reading material in the inbox

- It's the electronic equivalent of a clean desk. It makes a clean impression when other people look on it.

- It's needed when you use your inbox as a todo list.

> - It's the electronic equivalent of a clean desk. It makes a clean impression when other people look on it.

I don't think they are equivalent. Your desk is just there for people to see it, but email is much more personal. I wouldn't want people messing on my e-mail, as I don't want them messing in my drawers . There is nothing to hide, but they are not an open book.

For those of you in favor of a zero inbox, I have a couple of follow-up questions.

(1) are you archiving? (2) if not, how do you search for old emails?

Yes, all emails are available for searching

Yep. I've taken the Google model to Outlook. I have just one folder called archive. It comes down to these steps:

- If I haven't looked at it yet, it's unread in the inbox - If I've read it but still have something to do, it's marked read but still in the inbox - If I'm done with all of the actions associated with it, it goes into the archive folder

On top of that, I use search folders to quickly look at emails from specific people or groups. I prefer that to real folders as sometimes emails need to exist in multiple folders, plus those folders will catch anything that's in both the archive and inbox folders.

Privacy. Data protection. Why store data on the Internet that you don't need to?

If that is your issue, then a better way is to have your own server, encrypt your emails and ask your contacts to do also. Once your mails are hosted once on a server, you can't know where you data goes and how long it stays there. One minute is more than enough to archive an email on a warehouse.

The answer is pretty obvious to me. If I have 0 unread messages, when I login into my client I know I don't have any new messages without having to actually look at the message list.

I have 10,000+ emails in my inbox and I get the same benefit from them all being marked read. I also can search for back emails which you cannot (unless you have archived them).

Edit: Occurred to me you may have meant the same thing (if this is the case, pls ignore my post). I'm pretty sure the OP refers to empty inboxes (all messages deleted, not just marked read).

My inbox represents things I need to get done. If it's an email from a Prof, it's a project I need to start and get checkmark-scheduled on my calendar. If it's from a (potential) employer, it stays until I finish the next step in the interview process. I just recently finished up some long lasted loose ends that I'm very happy to have been done with. I just recently got back to 0 unread, and only 4 are still requiring enough attention to continuing living in my Inbox.

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