What I have learned about inbox zero

Hello and welcome to the traveling introvert. Today, I want to talk about things I've learned about inbox zero, and I previously done an episode on inbox zero and am it inbox zero? I totally understand. Does not work for everybody. I just want to talk about my experience with Inbox Zero. So for the past, I guess six months I've managed to hit Inbox zero. You know, I'd say consistently two or three times within that time period and I would get it. And I would be

 

 like, yes!  Give it two or three days or a week. And it's back to inbox, not zero. I want to put any numbers in there, but and I didn't mind. I was like, OK, well, I got to inbox zero, but stuff's going on and, you know, so on and so forth. However, I'm happy to say this is the first week that I've managed to have inbox zero all week. And I'm so stoked about it because it means that it is for me anyway, obtainable and sustainable, which is really important.

 

So here are the few things that I have learnt from my experience with Inbox zero. One. It's much harder for emails to get lost in the shuffle or get further down my inbox because my inbox is zero. Most of the time when it isn't like Oh, I got this email great, I don't check my mailbox as often because I don't feel overwhelmed by all the emails that are there. Or I might miss something and it might slip down the rabbit hole.

 

And one thing I really realized is how much easier it is for me to unsubscribe to emails that I don't want anymore. I know that there are apps out there that you can use to help you unsubscribe from things, but you might not get emailed as frequently or you might forget or it slips through the cracks. And so when you see an email and I'm like, who is that person? Why am I getting emails from them? It is so much easier for me to just go and click, unsubscribe and then never see it again because it has popped up in my mailbox.

 

And I think that is one of the key things about having inbox zero. Now, the first few days I'd go to sleep and then wake up and obviously have 40 or 50 or 60 emails in there. And I would make a point of being like, I am going to go in there and clear them out. And as the days have gone by, when I wake up in the morning, there are less and less emails in there. It's also part of the process was moving some of my business emails to my business email and keeping some of my personal emails in my personal, because that was a can be a blurred distinction sometimes because, you know, some people in person.

 

But you want to do a business thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So those are the things that I have learnt from my experience with Inbox zero in my personal mailbox. Now in my business mailbox, I also got to mailbox zero there, but it has been harder to maintain and I haven't figured out why yet. It could be because a lot of things that I want to get back to and I do use the snooze function, which I love, but it still doesn't quite work.

 

I also use streak for Gmail because I'm currently creating a lot of events and all those people I want to keep track of and see what stage they're at. So that helps with reminders. But I still haven't been as consistent with inbox zero, so I haven't gone above, say, mailbox ten, but it's still not the pretty mailbox zero thing. So that's what I'm working on for my business email. I mean, there is obviously the you know, I have multiple emails that I check, but these are my two main ones of my business, my personal, so personal.

 

I think I have nailed it, it is that the business needs a little more tweaking. So maybe it takes two weeks instead of one week for me to deal with mailbox zero. Now, like I said before, it is not and will not work for everybody. It happens to work for me right now and I look forward to continuing to work for me in the future. I know people that don't archive their mail or they don't go in and ruthlessly unsubscribe or think they're going to come back to a thing.

 

And as someone mentioned that they have a deal with or next folder, that they put some things in that they want to do or deal with when they they have a time set aside for things to do with my email. And they go in the next folder. I might play with that for my business, for my business email, but I'm scared that I won't check the next folder. So I need to figure out a way to, like, either put it in my calendar, like check next folder and there's a set time every day or I don't and I make it a color and then have a notification or reminder or something.

 

I mean, I know there's multiple ways of doing this. I just haven't figured out what's going to work for me. But that is my experience and the things that I have learnt from Inbox zero. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions or anything you want me to answer on the podcast, email me at Janice@thecareerntrovert.com Helping introverts build thier brand and get hired. Have a great rest of your week.