CHICAGO–The man who invented the concept of the zero email inbox says everyone is going about it all wrong—or, more precisely, they have missed the point.
Merlin Mann launched the website 43folders.com in 2004 and was soon preaching the gospel of inbox zero in articles on his site. The concept caught on like wildfire, and achieving inbox zero became so sought-after that wildly popular app Mailbox designed its entire product strategy around hitting inbox zero. When you got there, you received a glorious "You're all done" message over a pretty picture.
But Mann says we're doing it wrong. In an interview with Wired UK, he suggested everyone missed the point about inbox zero, and he further offered what should do instead.
The First Step
First, stop treating inbox zero as if it’s a means to an end.
Mann told Wired people should dissect how they’re spending their time on their various inboxes. If attention is so spread thin because you're responding to messages from all these places all the time, it's no surprise that you feel stressed out, he stated.
The Second Step
Second, Mann said everyone should have some grace with themselves and just accept that you can't do it all. Forget responding to every single message. Letting some of the less important stuff linger will give you some peace, he shared, before reminding that’s not an excuse to simply opt out and stop replying to anything.
“You've still got to stay on top of the priority items in your inbox. It's up to you to decide what those priorities are,” he stated.
The Third Step
Third, be wary of the clean slate approach.
Deleting everything as a means of trying to wipe the slate clean is a terrible idea, according to Mann, who instead recommends identifying key areas of focus. “Maybe you can hit delete on a certain type of email -- such as notifications or promotional ones.”
Mann said the important emails should be saved and individuals should begin to formulate a strategy to triage what's important and what's not. Mann suggests dedicating time three times a day to catch up on your inbox.
Other Approaches
Some other suggested approaches to email:
- Delete the email app from your phone when you're on vacation. Don't panic. It's easy to download the app again when you're back online.
- If you must email on weekends or during odd hours to catch up, schedule them to arrive during working hours. This is especially important if you're in a leadership role so that you lead by example and don't perpetuate an always-on culture. If you're emailing all weekends long, your direct reports will feel they need to as well.
- Turn off notifications -- email and otherwise -- so you're not constantly distracted with urgent-but-not-necessarily-important pings.