For the past couple of months, I have been adopting the Inbox emptying workflow known as the trusted trio (see the following link) in order to have a more manageable email inbox at work.
In a nutshell, the trusted trio methodology consists of having three separate folders (FollowUp, OnHold and Archive) in which every email that lands into your inbox should go.
Typically I check my inbox once every hour and follow the following process:
- email does not concern me: delete it immediately.
- I can answer the email in under two minutes: reply immediately.
- I need to follow up on that email with an action that takes more than 2 minutes: put it in the FollowUp folder.
- I'm waiting on someone for that email: put it in OnHold.
- I may need this email for future reference: stuff it in Archive folder.
Up until now I have been able to follow this process rather successfully, I leave work with an empty inbox, I have a FollowUp folder that contains between 10 and 40 emails.
I highly recommend mastering your email inbox with this methodology.
