The Gmail Zero project: commitment device for Inbox Zero | Hacker News Reader

The Gmail Zero project: commitment device for Inbox Zero

beeminder.com

35 pointsdreeves40 comments

After not understanding how it was possible to get inbox zero, I remembered that Gmail has an Archive box.

I personally leave everything in the inbox and concern myself about reading all emails flagged important... am I the only one to not use the archive function?

I actually don't know anyone that uses the archive function.

My "inbox zero" equivalent is to have no unread e-mails as I often leave e-mails that I need to respond to or handle as unread.

We do exist. I love having an empty inbox.

+1. Archiving is a huge part of my workflow, which is similar to that of the folks above me.

Pretty sure all versions of iOS >= 4 (and new-ish versions of OS X) support Archive when you tap the Delete icon, so it's not something I even think about anymore.

Gmail's Archive function is (or at least was, 8 years ago) its best feature! If you're not using it, you're Doing It Wrong.

If you think of your inbox as a to-do list (where the most basic task is "read this"), then the most common pattern ITDBG (In The Days Before Gmail) for managing your to-do was using read/unread as your done/todo flags.

This was annoying; when reading an email that can't be actioned right away you'd have to go back and mark it as unread. Trivial, but it always felt like there was a better way.

When Gmail launched with it's Archive feature, it was definitely an "ah-hah!" moment. Now the read/unread flags had no hidden meaning, and your to-do list was simply whatever your saw in your inbox. When you action an email, away to the archive it goes.

Reaching inbox-zero is a gloriously satisfying moment. Why yes ... I WILL read some google news.

Disagree. And if you're telling someone they're doing something wrong, you may be overemphasizing your point.

I use priority inbox to filter out the messages that I ignore 99% of the time. For items I need to act on later, I use stars. With P.I., I can hide or show my Priority emails, my starred emails, and everything else. So things that are new can get my attention, or I can focus on finishing something up, etc.

I don't disagree that your system works effectively for you, but I think it's a silly statement to tell someone else they're doing it wrong (especially silly to capitalize the phrase Doing It Wrong.)

The problem I have: I've got too much mail coming in to use manual "archive" effectively.

I filter mail aggressively. My inbox currently sits just below 2000 messages. "All" folder has nearly 25,000 messages. Given a 1-week average, I seem to get about 200 emails/day.

Most of those are machine-generated notifications or various list / subscribed mails. Subscriptions are generally ingnorable, though I'll be interested in stuff that pertains to my own posts, and occasionally search archives for issues related to things I've encountered (dual curse of GMail: it makes handling mail a bit awkward, but its search utilities are pretty good).

Those filter rules are also a bit funky. Where procmail gives great power (and requires great responsibility), GMail's filter syntax is more limited, doesn't allow running arbitrary commands (duh), and leaves me a bit confused on the order of application of filters (though it seems better than MS Outlook, which was completely broken in this regard).

My email is not just a to-do list.

It is in part a to-do list.

It's a reminder pile.

It's a knowledgebase.

It's a news stream.

It's a "oh, X happened, let's see if there's any other notice of it elsewhere in mail".

Not a one-size-fits-all tool.

My preferred interface

I do.

5 overall states for email:

unread

read+star (urgent/reminder)

read (todo/reference for current tasks/projects)

archived (done + keep for reference)

deleted (done + not needed for reference, or ignored altogether) - so "your amazon order shipped" etc.

I don't keep the inbox empty, but there are only emails regarding ACTIVE tasks/conversations in it, its natural state is 0 unread emails, as if you don't do that, well chaos awaits.

Archive Tip; you can reply+archive; gmail resurrects the whole conversation if you get a reply back, so you can pick up the whole thing if something you thought was done with gets resurrected. (useful for those "here's an answer, hit me up again if that's no good" replies)

The flip side is; I don't bother with labels at all, search just seems to render that redundant as far as I can see.

Sounds almost exactly me. I leave important emails in my inbox that I'm working with (and one or two from my parents). I have a max of about 10 at any time. Zero unread.

I would love to see these states represented:

- Unseen (sent but I haven't opened my inbox or cleared the notification)

- Unread (seen but not opened)

- Read

- Read & replied

Then I can delete and archive when I want.

I think GmailZero is perfect for your workflow. You can set your goal as inbox 10 instead of inbox 0. I could also see an argument for inbox 25 or whatever fits on one screen. Or maybe inbox 7 as the number of things you can hold in short-term memory...

you are a piler: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archiv...

Awesome! I knew these descriptions exist. I heard through the rumor mill that google had identified 12 distinct types of emailers too.

I am a piler. I agree with responding to email appropriately, but it is definitely just going to get left in my inbox.

The problem with leaving things in my inbox is that if I don't deal with it immediately, it quickly disappears in the stream of incoming stuff. So in theory I could "just develop the discipline" to deal with important / worthy items at the time of reading, but expecting myself to manufacture that discipline out of thin air actually stresses me out way more than a commitment device.

I was all excited to see this response from someone who totally gets where we're coming from. Then I noticed that my cofounder/spouse wrote it. :)

But, yes, here's more on that out of sight out of mind problem: http://messymatters.com/email

I leave everything in my inbox and currently have 0 unread personal and 1 unread work emails. My system is this: if it's marked unread, I need to do something. If it's read, nothing needs to be done. I also filter emails that i'll never need to do something with, but definitely want to their own folder (or tag or whatever) and remove it from the inbox. That means my main stream of incoming email is relevant, the nice to know is off to the side and I have a clear set of emails to review. The setup also means every email I get on my phone (only check certain tags/folders) is what I need to read soon, while other email is relegated to my 3 times a day checks (first thing, around lunch, last thing). The hardest part when moving to this system is setting the expectation that email is asynchronous communication and if real time or emergency communication is necessary, use another form of contact.

I just star anything that needs response and leave everything in the inbox.

If you need it, you can add different color stars to represent whatever you want.

I don't understand why people feel the need to archive. Seems like procrastination through over-optimization to me.

I don't understand what happens if I "slip". It sounds like there's money involved, but it's not clear at all.

The first time, your graph ("yellow brick road") just freezes. You then have to pledge $5 if you want to unfreeze and try it again. If you derail from the yellow brick road again then the $5 is automatically charged.

Gory details at http://beeminder.com/money

This is Beeminder, so pricing is at https://www.beeminder.com/money

You can "play" for free, as long as you're on track to meet your self-imposed goal.

If you set a goal, and then fail to work on it, you get one free "reset". If you fail again, you can either pledge money to reset again, or create a new goal (leaving the old, failed goal as a badge of shame).

It's a clever system, which acts to strongly reward setting realistic goals.

The only thing is, you have to be a bit careful if you're the kind of person to push yourself too hard. I set a beeminder to practice piano every day, then kept increasing the practice time, and eventually just burned myself right out. Go easy.

This beeminder thing is cool, they should make an app so I can limit how much time I spend on things such as Reddit or Hacker News.

You can do that! Choose a "Set a Limit" goal...

Here's me beeminding my time on Hacker News: http://beeminder.com/d/hn

I like the underlying idea, but the fact that this requires access to my Gmail account is a show-stopper for me. Email is simply too critical to leak to some external applications, even a trusted one.

It's not like that baby, we swear it!

No, you're right, it sucks that Google oauth just has an email scope without anything more fine-grained, like just seeing message counts.

I am already a slave to my Gmail, so I really don't see how putting even more pressure on my back would do me any good. What I really like to see are tools that actually help me get to the bottom of my inbox, Boomerang being a great example (email "snooze", very useful for cooling some threads down - http://www.boomeranggmail.com)

I really like followup.cc (similar to Boomerang) but you'd be surprised how a little stick can help.

I agree that http://followup.cc is better than Boomerang. Though I like my home brewed Google Apps Script solution best of all, based on http://lifehacker.com/5825634/how-to-add-a-snooze-button-to-...

By using integers as labels I can snooze things for a specified number of days with just a couple keystrokes. And I'm not relying on an external service that way. Emails with the label "1" are not in my inbox today, but they automatically will be again tomorrow.

I consistently have more than 3,000 unread mails but I like having everything in one mailbox without archiving it. The reason for that is context. If I'm looking for mail C I know it's behind mail B. It's my way of keeping order in the chaos. Not so much with inbox zero, you lose all context and you will have to rely on your memory to retrieve your mail.

The brilliance of Gmail threads is that it reintroduces context immediately for a thread. As a developer, you should know that multithreaded context is a bad idea... :)

After Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Critique. As if my inner chastiser wasn't hard enough to deal with :/

Sorry, this will only increase my stress. It is not the solution. Just like the emails weighing down on you.

You're in the uncanny valley of stress where it's enough to upset you, but not enough to get you to fix it :)

Perhaps an increase in stress level is exactly what you need to really get this fixed since you do care about it.

Does this work with Priority Inbox? I don't even had a 'Read' counter...

Alas, I don't think so. It also doesn't really work if you let your number of Unread messages grow without bound, since it's only looking at how many messages you've read but left sitting in your inbox.

I personally don't like the priority inbox concept. I really want to have full control over what I allow to go out of sight out of mind. If I got a truly overwhelming amount of email then I guess I'd be happy to trust that to Google.

In a sense I do have an overwhelming amount of email but not so much that I can't at least look at everything that comes in and decide for myself what can be ignored.

Do you know how to see the 'read' system label? It doesn't show up for me in 'manage labels'.

Gmail is a bit inconsistent about that by default: it shows you the number of individual unread messages, and then the total number of threads, so you can't use subtraction to get an accurate read count. GmailZero gives the number of fully read threads (unless you have a really huge inbox, in which case it counts the bare read msgs until you get down) -- so if a thread has an unread msg it goes back to an unread thread and doesn't count against you.

I currently have over 15,000 unread emails (not even archived). I see no point in reading them all, I've already looked at the titles.

E-mails I care about are filtered into folders or marked as important.

The idea for this was inspired by Getting Things Done (by David Allen). The key idea is that to achieve productivity, you need a clear mind. A clear mind is knowing that everything in your life is either shelved away for Archival purposes, has a clear present next action or is awaiting followup from someone else.

The 15,000 unread emails would drive me crazy. Perhaps declaring email bankruptcy is a way to get out of it?

typo(?):

  I, <Need To Sign Up?>,
  pledge to get my Gmail inbox
  to 10 *UnRead* messages
  and keep it there.

Ah, not a typo but I can see how that's confusing for people who mark things read vs unread instead of archiving vs leaving in the inbox.

GmailZero only works for people who (try to) diligently archive messages. It doesn't count Unread messages against you since you don't have control over those.

This kind of obsession with efficiency only leads me to one place: http://www.subgenius.com/

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