Strategies for Dealing With Email Overload – How To Get To And Maintain Inbox Zero

I still receive too much email – but I’ve gone from thousands of emails per day down to only hundreds, and daily manage to avoid reading most of them.

If you are one of the lucky few who does not suffer from email overload, I applaud you – though you still may gain something from reading about how I deal with all my incoming email.  For the rest of us, it’s an ongoing battle – and here are some of the strategies I use. Before we get to that, let’s discuss where I used to be and where I am now.

Why Am I Qualified to Discuss Email Overload And Inbox Zero?

I used to receive upwards of 2,000 email per day. I have since whittled it down to around 200-300 email per day. That’s still a lot of email, but  I manually only deal with perhaps 10-20% of the email that comes my way. I divide my strategies for dealing with email into three buckets:

• Reduce Junk Emails Coming In
• Reduce The Amount of Email People Send You
• Maintanance: Keeping The Inbox At Zero

Step One – Reduce Junk Emails Coming In

The first step is to deal with the low hanging fruit – no value to low value emails, for which there are some easy solutions.

1. Get a Good Spam Filter.  Depending on how much spam your account gets, this can immediately make a difference of anywhere from a 20-90% reduction in email traffic. In my case, I use Google Apps for email and so have GMail’s spam filter working for me.  It seems obvious, but I am continually surprised by how many people use desktop email clients without spam filters and just accept spam as part of life.
2. Unsubscribe From Excess Newsletters.  As I discussed previous in an article about what I call self inflicted junk email, one of the biggest steps you can take to reduce the amount of email in your inbox is unsubscribing from all those online stores and newsletters you were once interested in, but have since moved on from. If you’re curious about how you got here, being signed up on so many irrelevant newsletters, you should definitely click through and read the article about self inflicted junk email. In the article I describe from a psychological standpoint why we take shortcuts and just delete email rather than unsubscribing from newsletters.
3. Turn Off Notifications.  I don’t need to know the exact second someone new follows me on twitter or tag me in a photo on Facebook. I turn a lot of these notifications off. I’ll find out soon enough when I visit the website.  If you absolutely must keep an archive of these things, then instead you can look at the next step:
4. Create Filters for Low Value Emails.  This will vary depending on how you receive your email. I use GMail’s filters very aggressively – I have over 400 of them at this point.  Every time I receive an email from a friend or colleague that is low value, I consider how I could filter it out so I don’t see it in my inbox, and can instead deal with it at my leisure. As an example, one of my friends likes to send my political articles from a particular website.  I set up a filter to look for emails from that person, with the website name in the email body, and move it to a folder I called “Review Optional“  (basically, a step above spam).  Now every time my friend sends me a political news story, I never see it – it goes straight to that folder, where I will eventually read it, or (more likely) delete it unread.  I try to avoid wasting time online as it is – I certainly don’t need more distractions.

These are all ways of reducing the number of emails that hit your inbox through various automated means – the next step is training people to send you less email.  Here are some of the strategies I employ for that.

Step Two – Reduce The Amount Of Email People Send You

1. Reduce External Commitments.  No matter how good you are at slicing, dicing and filtering email, ultimately the reason we receive email is because something requires our attention.  Sometimes we blame our inbox, when the reality is we’ve taken on more than we can chew.  Don’t blame the email or the person who sent it – blame the activity or group you are involved in.  As a personal example, I was involved with an online acquaintance who wanted my feedback while his startup was in beta.  Initially it was easy, but he has since upped the ante to asking me to fill out long surveys, test out specific features in specific ways, and it went from being a simple 15 minute a week commitment to multiple 1-2 hour tasks which I was behind on.  I had all these emails as something I would do “someday” until one day I  realized I just didn’t care anymore – and I dropped the commitment.  I now also cut some threads as soon as they begin – I simply don’t have time to research every partnership and promotional opportunity that comes my way.  If it’s unsolicited, I may not even reply, I may just delete it without a response – which brings me to my next point…
2. Respond to fewer email.  Tim Ferris notes that “each email he [Robert Scoble] replies to produces between 1.5 and 2 additional e-mail in return. Sending e-mail multiplies the e-mail you receive.”  While this is admittedly a small sample, I believe the general concept will always hold true.  If an email doesn’t require a response, don’t respond – or you risk getting a reply back!
3. Get Out Of Endless Discussions.  When someone emails me and CCs a number of people, but I think the response is only relevant to them – I just reply to them. If they want to share the response with the CCed group, they are now free to – but at least I’ve removed myself from the list.  In other cases, I’ll end emails with a phrase that explicitly says this is the end of the line, and I’m done with it. As an example of one I recently sent:
   

   “I hope this discussion has been productive for you and you’ve gained some new information to help you with ____.  While I’ve enjoyed working with you, I don’t have any more time to participate in this project.  For further help, I highly recommend the ____ forums located at ____.  My time is limited, but if you absolutely require my help we could discuss compensation options. I think though that you will be extremely happy and learn a lot just from the free help available in the forums =)”

   In that specific case, I also made reference to the fact that my time is limited and isn’t free. I’m willing to help people, but sometimes I get in deeper than I had planned for!

4. Respond to Email More Slowly.  I have a confession – I often intentionally hold back on replying to emails.  The reason for this is I want people to assume that I will not respond quickly*.  I believe responding too quickly gives people the impression that I am always available to them and that responding to their email does not cost me anything.  This is not true – it’s just that I check email at frequent intervals throughout the day, and sometimes during those specific intervals (such as lunch, or while I am processing RSS feeds and eating breakfast) I happen to be going through email when one comes in.  To combat this, I intentionally create lag before replying to emails.  This not only conditions people to wait when they email me before following up, it also discourages people from emailing me if there is something time sensitive they need.  If they need a response from me by Sunday, and it’s already Saturday afternoon, they’re much less likely to email me if they already know it takes me three days to respond. Of course I don’t make everyone wait just as I don’t recuse myself from all discussions – these are strategies I use to avoid emails I don’t want.  The whole point is to get away from things that don’t give me value so I can spend more time doing what I love.

* Note: One quick caveat.  Part of the reason I receive so many emails is I also want to discourage phone calls for discussion or information gathering. If someone emails me, and the email looks like a replacement for a phone call, I try to respond fairly  quickly and completely as possible.  If I do not want to continue the discussion, I also include  an explicit conclusion that cements the thread or discussion as closed.

Step 3 – Maintenance: Keeping The Inbox At Zero

I love having my inbox empty.  I like to get in and out quickly, and have as little there as possible.  Here are some strategies I use:

1. File And Delete Aggressively.  Some people believe in just archiving to one folder, while I believe in archiving to many different folders to make retrieval easier.  I am not going to debate which method is superior – my point is just that once you’ve read an email, decide whether you are going to do something about it.  If I don’t have an immediate action item from the email, I immediately file it away or delete it and get it out of my inbox ASAP.
2. Stop Using The Inbox As A Todo List.  I’ve seen it too many times, and was guilty of it myself.  There’s that email from Amazon that you’re leaving in your inbox to remind you to order a book as a present for a friend.  There’s the email about an upcoming concert, to remind you to ask that girl out next time you see her.  Let’s put a stop to it – your inbox is not a todo list.  If you do have something that you need to have as a reminder for tasks you need done, a better approach is to log it on a separate task list and file it away. Barring that, a quick bandaid solution? Create a TODO folder and file your task emails in there.  Just get them out of the inbox, and review your TODO folder once a day.
3. Auto Filter To Buckets.  I mentioned filtering earlier, and how I have over four hundred filters set up.  I also have set up a number of buckets in my email account:  Review Nightly, Review Weekends, Review Someday and Review Optional,.  As the names imply, I auto filter a lot of my email and batch process them once a day, once a week, and then someday/optionally.  Review Optional is really items I think are likely spam or low value email from friends (joke forwards, hoaxes, articles they want me to read, etc).  Some good examples for Review Nightly is filtering items  such as notifications someone has left me a comment, event invitations, requests to connect, people contacting me via my contact form, etc.  I want my inbox to have as little as possible, so I can check it a few times a day and truly see only the most relevant, and perhaps time sensitive items from close friends and family.  I receive email on my BlackBerry, and I want to minimize what makes it through my filters
4. Draft A Response and File It. I mentioned I don’t reply to emails immediately – that is not entirely true. Sometimes I’ll receive an email and know it requires a response, and I’ll write my response up.  I’ll proof it, and then save it as a draft.  I can then move that item out of my inbox and file it to Review Nightly or Review Weekends.  After a couple days, I’ll review that email, determine sufficient time has past, and send my draft out.  This strategy gets the email out of my inbox and off my mind, but still maintains a lag in my reply to discourage too many emails.
5. Just Let It Go And Don’t Respond.  Really. You don’t have to respond to every email.  Some people use autoresponders, some people reply with one sentence – I don’t do any of those.  If an email is unsolicited, and I feel like it’s just a waste of my time, I don’t have any problem deleting it without a response. Life is too short to be worrying about replying to emails I don’t care about.

Additional Reading

As I was writing this, I thought of some related articles that you may enjoy and hand picked a few that I think complement this article well.  You may be interested in reading these as well:

• Simple Time Saving Tip #62 – Stop Self Inflicted Junk Email
• Stop Wasting Time Online! Tips and Start Pages To Improve Concentration Online
• Are You Really Working – or Just Using Metawork as an Excuse to Avoid Real Work?

Enjoy this artcle? You should Tweet This and share it with your friends, or feel free to share it however you like using this shortened link : http://tr.im/emailoverload

Want another take on the issue? Here’s Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero presentation he did at Google.

Get On The List and Get Your Free Course and Ebook!

Your free personal development course, Personal Development 101 Instant updates when new articles get published Your free copy of The Little Book Of Big Motivational Quotes Enter Your Email Address Now:

I still receive too much email – but I’ve gone from thousands of emails per day down to only hundreds, and daily manage to avoid reading most of them.

If you are one of the lucky few who does not suffer from email overload, I applaud you – though you still may gain something from reading about how I deal with all my incoming email.  For the rest of us, it’s an ongoing battle – and here are some of the strategies I use. Before we get to that, let’s discuss where I used to be and where I am now.

Why Am I Qualified to Discuss Email Overload And Inbox Zero?

I used to receive upwards of 2,000 email per day. I have since whittled it down to around 200-300 email per day. That’s still a lot of email, but  I manually only deal with perhaps 10-20% of the email that comes my way. I divide my strategies for dealing with email into three buckets:

• Reduce Junk Emails Coming In
• Reduce The Amount of Email People Send You
• Maintanance: Keeping The Inbox At Zero

Step One – Reduce Junk Emails Coming In

The first step is to deal with the low hanging fruit – no value to low value emails, for which there are some easy solutions.

1. Get a Good Spam Filter.  Depending on how much spam your account gets, this can immediately make a difference of anywhere from a 20-90% reduction in email traffic. In my case, I use Google Apps for email and so have GMail’s spam filter working for me.  It seems obvious, but I am continually surprised by how many people use desktop email clients without spam filters and just accept spam as part of life.
2. Unsubscribe From Excess Newsletters.  As I discussed previous in an article about what I call self inflicted junk email, one of the biggest steps you can take to reduce the amount of email in your inbox is unsubscribing from all those online stores and newsletters you were once interested in, but have since moved on from. If you’re curious about how you got here, being signed up on so many irrelevant newsletters, you should definitely click through and read the article about self inflicted junk email. In the article I describe from a psychological standpoint why we take shortcuts and just delete email rather than unsubscribing from newsletters.
3. Turn Off Notifications.  I don’t need to know the exact second someone new follows me on twitter or tag me in a photo on Facebook. I turn a lot of these notifications off. I’ll find out soon enough when I visit the website.  If you absolutely must keep an archive of these things, then instead you can look at the next step:
4. Create Filters for Low Value Emails.  This will vary depending on how you receive your email. I use GMail’s filters very aggressively – I have over 400 of them at this point.  Every time I receive an email from a friend or colleague that is low value, I consider how I could filter it out so I don’t see it in my inbox, and can instead deal with it at my leisure. As an example, one of my friends likes to send my political articles from a particular website.  I set up a filter to look for emails from that person, with the website name in the email body, and move it to a folder I called “Review Optional“  (basically, a step above spam).  Now every time my friend sends me a political news story, I never see it – it goes straight to that folder, where I will eventually read it, or (more likely) delete it unread.  I try to avoid wasting time online as it is – I certainly don’t need more distractions.

These are all ways of reducing the number of emails that hit your inbox through various automated means – the next step is training people to send you less email.  Here are some of the strategies I employ for that.

Step Two – Reduce The Amount Of Email People Send You

1. Reduce External Commitments.  No matter how good you are at slicing, dicing and filtering email, ultimately the reason we receive email is because something requires our attention.  Sometimes we blame our inbox, when the reality is we’ve taken on more than we can chew.  Don’t blame the email or the person who sent it – blame the activity or group you are involved in.  As a personal example, I was involved with an online acquaintance who wanted my feedback while his startup was in beta.  Initially it was easy, but he has since upped the ante to asking me to fill out long surveys, test out specific features in specific ways, and it went from being a simple 15 minute a week commitment to multiple 1-2 hour tasks which I was behind on.  I had all these emails as something I would do “someday” until one day I  realized I just didn’t care anymore – and I dropped the commitment.  I now also cut some threads as soon as they begin – I simply don’t have time to research every partnership and promotional opportunity that comes my way.  If it’s unsolicited, I may not even reply, I may just delete it without a response – which brings me to my next point…
2. Respond to fewer email.  Tim Ferris notes that “each email he [Robert Scoble] replies to produces between 1.5 and 2 additional e-mail in return. Sending e-mail multiplies the e-mail you receive.”  While this is admittedly a small sample, I believe the general concept will always hold true.  If an email doesn’t require a response, don’t respond – or you risk getting a reply back!
3. Get Out Of Endless Discussions.  When someone emails me and CCs a number of people, but I think the response is only relevant to them – I just reply to them. If they want to share the response with the CCed group, they are now free to – but at least I’ve removed myself from the list.  In other cases, I’ll end emails with a phrase that explicitly says this is the end of the line, and I’m done with it. As an example of one I recently sent:
   

   “I hope this discussion has been productive for you and you’ve gained some new information to help you with ____.  While I’ve enjoyed working with you, I don’t have any more time to participate in this project.  For further help, I highly recommend the ____ forums located at ____.  My time is limited, but if you absolutely require my help we could discuss compensation options. I think though that you will be extremely happy and learn a lot just from the free help available in the forums =)”

   In that specific case, I also made reference to the fact that my time is limited and isn’t free. I’m willing to help people, but sometimes I get in deeper than I had planned for!

4. Respond to Email More Slowly.  I have a confession – I often intentionally hold back on replying to emails.  The reason for this is I want people to assume that I will not respond quickly*.  I believe responding too quickly gives people the impression that I am always available to them and that responding to their email does not cost me anything.  This is not true – it’s just that I check email at frequent intervals throughout the day, and sometimes during those specific intervals (such as lunch, or while I am processing RSS feeds and eating breakfast) I happen to be going through email when one comes in.  To combat this, I intentionally create lag before replying to emails.  This not only conditions people to wait when they email me before following up, it also discourages people from emailing me if there is something time sensitive they need.  If they need a response from me by Sunday, and it’s already Saturday afternoon, they’re much less likely to email me if they already know it takes me three days to respond. Of course I don’t make everyone wait just as I don’t recuse myself from all discussions – these are strategies I use to avoid emails I don’t want.  The whole point is to get away from things that don’t give me value so I can spend more time doing what I love.

* Note: One quick caveat.  Part of the reason I receive so many emails is I also want to discourage phone calls for discussion or information gathering. If someone emails me, and the email looks like a replacement for a phone call, I try to respond fairly  quickly and completely as possible.  If I do not want to continue the discussion, I also include  an explicit conclusion that cements the thread or discussion as closed.

Step 3 – Maintenance: Keeping The Inbox At Zero

I love having my inbox empty.  I like to get in and out quickly, and have as little there as possible.  Here are some strategies I use:

1. File And Delete Aggressively.  Some people believe in just archiving to one folder, while I believe in archiving to many different folders to make retrieval easier.  I am not going to debate which method is superior – my point is just that once you’ve read an email, decide whether you are going to do something about it.  If I don’t have an immediate action item from the email, I immediately file it away or delete it and get it out of my inbox ASAP.
2. Stop Using The Inbox As A Todo List.  I’ve seen it too many times, and was guilty of it myself.  There’s that email from Amazon that you’re leaving in your inbox to remind you to order a book as a present for a friend.  There’s the email about an upcoming concert, to remind you to ask that girl out next time you see her.  Let’s put a stop to it – your inbox is not a todo list.  If you do have something that you need to have as a reminder for tasks you need done, a better approach is to log it on a separate task list and file it away. Barring that, a quick bandaid solution? Create a TODO folder and file your task emails in there.  Just get them out of the inbox, and review your TODO folder once a day.
3. Auto Filter To Buckets.  I mentioned filtering earlier, and how I have over four hundred filters set up.  I also have set up a number of buckets in my email account:  Review Nightly, Review Weekends, Review Someday and Review Optional,.  As the names imply, I auto filter a lot of my email and batch process them once a day, once a week, and then someday/optionally.  Review Optional is really items I think are likely spam or low value email from friends (joke forwards, hoaxes, articles they want me to read, etc).  Some good examples for Review Nightly is filtering items  such as notifications someone has left me a comment, event invitations, requests to connect, people contacting me via my contact form, etc.  I want my inbox to have as little as possible, so I can check it a few times a day and truly see only the most relevant, and perhaps time sensitive items from close friends and family.  I receive email on my BlackBerry, and I want to minimize what makes it through my filters
4. Draft A Response and File It. I mentioned I don’t reply to emails immediately – that is not entirely true. Sometimes I’ll receive an email and know it requires a response, and I’ll write my response up.  I’ll proof it, and then save it as a draft.  I can then move that item out of my inbox and file it to Review Nightly or Review Weekends.  After a couple days, I’ll review that email, determine sufficient time has past, and send my draft out.  This strategy gets the email out of my inbox and off my mind, but still maintains a lag in my reply to discourage too many emails.
5. Just Let It Go And Don’t Respond.  Really. You don’t have to respond to every email.  Some people use autoresponders, some people reply with one sentence – I don’t do any of those.  If an email is unsolicited, and I feel like it’s just a waste of my time, I don’t have any problem deleting it without a response. Life is too short to be worrying about replying to emails I don’t care about.

Additional Reading

As I was writing this, I thought of some related articles that you may enjoy and hand picked a few that I think complement this article well.  You may be interested in reading these as well:

• Simple Time Saving Tip #62 – Stop Self Inflicted Junk Email
• Stop Wasting Time Online! Tips and Start Pages To Improve Concentration Online
• Are You Really Working – or Just Using Metawork as an Excuse to Avoid Real Work?

Enjoy this artcle? You should Tweet This and share it with your friends, or feel free to share it however you like using this shortened link : http://tr.im/emailoverload

Want another take on the issue? Here’s Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero presentation he did at Google.

Get On The List and Get Your Free Course and Ebook!

Your free personal development course, Personal Development 101 Instant updates when new articles get published Your free copy of The Little Book Of Big Motivational Quotes Enter Your Email Address Now:

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