My inbox is a mess. I constantly see people tweeting about how their inbox is "finally down to zero" or how they’ve gotten it down to 10 emails. If I get 10 emails in my “priority inbox” from Googlemail I’m excited.
I pay Google for more storage every year, and I use my inbox as a Rolodex and for reference. Who was it I met last week that emailed me about that thing? My inbox knows! I don’t worry about making sure I’ve organized my contact list, as surely I can just search for whatever brand or company I need to get in touch with and poof! There’s their contact info in the signature of an email they sent me a few months ago.
However, I have a feeling I’m living a life of inbox chaos.
This weekend Oliver Burkeman explained how he attacks his inbox: by separating things in to “active” and “reference”. Apparently, to live at one with your inbox, you should only keep active emails in your inbox. “Active” meaning they require action - things like questions from colleagues, invitations, etc. Burkeman says that we should also honour Chris Anderson’s Save Our Inboxes rules by not responding to emails that don’t require a response (also known as NNTR emails - No Need to Respond) as to help keep others’ inboxes clean.
The emails that are not “active” and are only kept for “reference” should be archived. In fact, Burkeman goes so far to say that we should “get into the habit of archiving reference emails as soon as they arrive, or as soon as they turn into reference emails through being answered.”
In an effort to save my own inbox, I went through my messages and started archiving emails that were just in my inbox (not my priority inbox) without knowing where these archived messages go. I have a feeling Googlemail is not set up for this “active” and “reference” organizational method, so I accidentally “archived” every single email I had received in the last few weeks, unable to find a fecking “archive” folder.
Essentially, I found archiving rather stressful. And confusing.
One tip of Burkeman’s I did find incredibly interesting though was the five.sentenc.es website that encourages you to live by the “five sentences rule”, wherein your emails - EVERY SINGLE ONE - will not be longer than five sentences.
They even have a nifty explanation for your swift email to go in to your email signature.
Q: Why is this email five sentences or less?
A: http://five.sentenc.es
And for those who live dangerously, there’s also two, three and four sentence email policies.
Crazy, I know.
While I not know how to archive or mark things as “active” or “reference”, I think I will start living by the five sentences rule.
And, please, if you have any useful inbox organizational skills or email response policies, please share them with me. Clearly, I need help.