This week Maria Carey’s iconic Christmas song “All I want for Christmas is you” reached #1 on the Billboard hot 100 list for the 1^st time ever, even though she initially released the song 25 years ago.  This is a great reminder that some things get better with age, and also some things take time to really hit their peak.  This isn’t really the point of my sharing this, so I’ll move on to it.  I’ve heard this song a lot over the past few weeks as it’s on our Christmas mix rotation and my kids love it.  Every time I heard it I keep thinking in my head, “All I want for Christmas is an empty inbox.”  It doesn’t have the same romanticism or ring to it that “you” has in Maria’s version of the song, but in reality, I’d be super happy to get an empty inbox for Christmas.  That is really all I want. 

You’ve perhaps read my “dear email” break-up letter, where I try to breakup my with email as I have just had enough.  It never really works though; I just keep coming back for more. 

I have a bit of time off work over the holidays, and sadly one of top goals is to get my various inboxes (there are a handful of them) to zero and/or mostly to zero.  In the spirit of a mostly minimal life, I’ll take something very close to zero inbox to start 2020 off with.  Below is the harsh reality of the current state of my inboxes. 

Work inbox – 312 emails

Personal inbox – 453 emails

PTA President inbox – 293 emails

Mostly Minimal Life inbox – 730 emails

friends on FIRE inbox – 60 emails

Total inboxes = 1,848 emails*

*In full disclosure, this does not include 1500+ emails that are in my current Sanebox folder.  I use a tool called Sanebox that does a great job of weeding out spam emails, emails from people I don’t know, etc.  It gets smarter over time and learns what emails you engage with vs. not.  Every month or two I will go into the folder where it deposits the emails it thinks you don’t need and I just do a quick scan to see if anything important is in there.  I usually find maybe 2-5 things out of 1,000+ that are of value to me. 

Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever counted all of them and tallied them up like this.  It’s a bit overwhelming to see the number totaling 1800+.  All I want for Christmas is an empty inbox.  Today is Christmas day, so my real goal is to do this before January 1, 2020. 

Here are some of the tactics I am going to take to get myself to zero inbox by January 1, 2020:

• Process in small batches vs. all day – I try to process my email in small batches of time vs. all day long throughout the day. During the work week I will schedule a couple 30-minute blocks throughout the day to process my email.  It often gets over booked, but the intent is there.  I’ll do the same thing over my time off.  Instead of just scanning my email from time to time, I will block some focused chunks of time so I can get in a state of flow and make some quick decisions about my emails. 
• Touch it once – My goal is to touch each email only once and then make a quick decision on it. I’ll be honest though, I am terrible at this.  I open a lot of emails and my thought is “ugh, this isn’t going to be a quick reply” so I close it, mark it unread, and move on to something that’s easier to deal with.  This is my MO.  But the first step in the process is to recognize I have a problem, then fix it.  So I know to make serious progress on my inbox over the next week I am going to need to truly touch each email only once.    Once I open the email, I will decide to either:
  • ACTION on the email:
    • DO it. This could be replying to someone, doing whatever someone is asking of me, etc.  If I can do something with it in 1-2 minutes I will do it right then while I am processing emails. 
    • DELEGATE it to someone else. If it’s not something I can or should be doing, I will forward it to someone else with a clear ask.  During a time like the holidays I don’t want to bug people on my team at work or really anyone, so I often will schedule the reply to go out later once everyone is back in the office (especially if it’s not time sensitive).  Most email apps allow you to schedule emails to send later vs. now. 
    • DEFER it. This is sadly how I treat way too many emails right now.  I defer it by opening it, thinking about how that’s a big task, and then closing it and marking it unread.  Not a good approach.  So my goal is to properly defer things.  If I don’t need to do something with it right then, then I am going to add it to my to-do list and/or schedule time on my calendar to deal with that situation if it’s a bigger thing.  For many things I just need to get it on to my to-do list, and then archive it for future reference.  I use wunderlist for my to-do list and it has a nice feature where you can forward any email to a special personal wunderlist email and it will automagically add it to your to-do list.  This is a great feature, and most to-do list apps have it. 
  • ARCHIVE or delete the email. I archive 90% of my emails vs. deleting them, but there are definitely some things I would never need to reference again and I do try to delete those.  If not, I archive it.  I do not file it in any crazy folder structure where I have to decide which of 40 folders to put it into.  I am a big fan of the generic “archive.”  Just archive it, and use your email programs search feature if you ever need to find it again. 
• Don’t use my inbox as a to-do list – I’ll admit I do this, and I know it’s not a good approach. Per my recommendation about, I really should be adding any emails that require an action I can’t do right now to my to-do list.  And if it’s a big thing, it should get some scheduled time on my calendar. 
• Unsubscribe – I need to stop the madness of some stuff in my inbox, and just unsubscribe to more things. I’ve used tools like unroll me in the past, but it doesn’t take that long to just unsubscribe the old-fashioned way, which is to click on the unsubscribe link that legally has to be at the bottom of every email you receive. 
• Set filters/rules – I will proactively set more filters on my inbox, especially my personal inbox. There are a lot of emails that I don’t want to unsubscribe to, but that I don’t need to see day to day in my inbox.  Some examples of this are retail or travel emails with coupons, certain newsletters, etc.  I may want to go and see if I have a coupon for some store if I am about to buy something, but I don’t need it distracting me in the moment.  I have some filters setup that automatically put a lot of retailer emails in a “coupons” folder in gmail and then if I am in the market for something I will go and search for the latest offer from that company.  Setting filters and rules can really help to tame your inbox.
• Leverage Templates – There are many things where I get asked for the same information via email multiple times, and as soon as I notice a pattern, I will create a template for that thing/response. I do this today in a few areas, but I need to get more focused on doing it.  I will write a whole blog post on email templates soon, but the quick guidance is you can save a draft in any email tool with a commonly used/needed response, or you can save them in a word/google doc, or use a text expander tool to save/use your templated responses to things.  The template could be a full response to a commonly asked request, or it could be a small snippet of information that you often need to share. 
• Declair email bankruptcy – I’ve never been able to completely do this, but I have heard of people declaring email bankruptcy before. This means you basically just delete or archive everything in your inbox, and assume that if it’s important that person will reach back out to you again.  I have a special strain of OCD that does not allow me to do this, but I love the idea of it and I’ve done mini-versions of it.  At the end of the year when my inbox is just out of control (like right now), I am much more motivated to just let go of some things.  I let go and realize I’m just never going to be able to do that thing, read that long explanation, etc. 

I hope you’ve enjoyed some tips and tricks for taming an inbox.  I’m feeling mostly confident that I can get these 1800+ emails in line between now and January 1^st.  I’ll report back soon and let you know how it’s going.  And here’s to seeing if I get the one Christmas present I really want… an empty inbox. 

Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.