Jackson Chung over at MakeUseOf posted a beautifully simple flow chart for maintaining Inbox Zero: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/maintain-inbox-zero-daily-with-this-flow-chart/

We’ve learnt inbox zero isn’t for every one of our users, but it does have two wonderful advantages:

  1. It just feels great!
  2. It means you’ve at least seen, and made a decision about, everything important – e.g. an urgent email from your boss.
    Knowing that you’ve processed everything, even if you haven’t yet completed it, stops your brain being distracted by wondering what nasty surprises are building up — freeing you to get things done.

ActiveInbox has buttons and shortcuts to help you achieve it:

  • If you delegate to someone, you can mark the email as ‘Waiting On’. This means you can track it until they reply, and follow it up if you don’t get a response.
  • If it takes longer than 2 minutes, rather than laboriously add it to another task manager, you can click ‘Action’ and ActiveInbox will track the email as a task you have to do later. You can also deadline the email.
  • If you just want to delete it (or archive it), ActiveInbox has 1-click ‘delete and move to the next older email’, to quickly glide through your inbox.

  

This was written by Andy Mitchell

  

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