Inbox Zero FAIL

When my desktop hard drive died, I had to reinstall from my backup. I did not, however, transfer my inbox. I left it on my laptop, instead deciding to start from scratch and see how I could do. That doesn’t mean I gave up on my other email. I just wanted to see if I could keep my inbox as small as possible.

It worked for a while. But work, life, family and oh, I don’t know, sleep, got in the way. And sadly, I’m back up to around 300 emails in there. Many of them are just email alerts that I need to read through and discard. They just keep adding up, though. I unsubscribed to alerts and newsletters that I didn’t use or need. I try to archive things immediately after I read them if they don’t need any action.

I’ve basically been glancing at them as they come in. I reply if it’s something I can deal with in less than a minute. I haven’t left anything important unanswered. So the question is, what’s in there?

Well, that’s what I should find out. I need to schedule some time to clear out my inbox a little. At minimum, I need to delete the email alerts that I’m not going to read. File away those newsletters for some down time, or re-evaluate whether they are useful to me.

Maybe keeping my inbox completely empty isn’t realistic. I do tend to use it like a to-do repository. And that doesn’t have to be a bad thing, as long as I don’t lose track of important messages.

How do you handle your inbox? Is it realistic for you to keep it close to zero? Obviously 300 emails are a bit too many to keep track of easily. But what about 100? 50? 10? What’s reasonable for you? And is it actually working for you?

[Image: sxc.hu]