I am not a inbox zero proponent. I think if you manage to get to the bottom of your email everyday, you may be spending too much time on email. I usually have about 40 in my inbox at any time. I get to the important ones then once a week I do some catch up.
But, sometimes on really busy weeks, when I’ve been on vacation, or I’ve been really lazy with email I may have more than a couple weeks of email to go through. I find the quickest way to clear out all the emails is to take a week. On Monday I will clear out all the emails from Sunday, then the Sunday before, then the Sunday before, etc. I like to go by week’s because otherwise I am afraid things from earlier week’s will take too long to get to. And it’s fun to find out that most of those older emails can be deleted or archived.
Then Tuesday I will take care of Monday’s and the Monday before and the Monday before.
In one week, the email backlog is gone.
***
Of course you know I am the opposite – I love inbox zero 🙂
I twitch if I have more than 10 sitting there.
But as I always say, each person is unique and each style will be different.
I agree with you, Beth, some people become obsessed with something to the point of over-organised 🙂
I did a talk on Monday night and one of the ladies tracks exactly what she buys every month – not in general categories like groceries, personal, phone, etc. But X on onions, x on chocolate, etc.
That is over-organised. I have a feeling I’m going to be challenging her a little on letting go… 🙂
I have always thought that the “zero inbox” movement was a throw back to the early computer days when disk space was measured in Bytes not gigabytes.
I am finding that it is simpler to just leave ALL my messages in my inbox, and let the email search function categorize and find things for me. Then I can spend time worrying about something else (like actually sorting the pile of laundry sitting next to me).