Productivity is a beautiful thing. The issue is that what surrounds you – both online and in person- has the power to affect that productivity.
For those of you who know me, you know that my neurotic self wants to constantly jump from one thing to another. Unfortunately, if you’re restless like me, you may have some trouble buckling down to use your time and energy on one task at hand. Being productive and making the most of that time is important when responsibility levels and tasks continue to rise. The key to staying productive in the face of our rapid-fire minds and our fast-paced lives is organization.
It’s no secret that it’s easier to commit our minds to something and to appropriately prioritize when all of your responsibilities have been considered and thought through. It’s even less of a secret that it’s nearly impossible to accomplish that when all of said responsibilities are blending into one another in absolute clashing chaos.
So what is one of my most important productivity tips for organization? Inbox Zero.
If you’re unfamiliar with the phrase, it basically describes the organizational nirvana that you reach when you have zero emails in your inbox.
Yes, you read that correctly. Zero. And despite the way this post has been titled, this is not Mission Impossible. Now for the business person it’s more the idea of zero that will drive you. Like me the number of emails indicates action points. My inbox at the end of the day typically has 15-30 emails – all which require an action that is longer than 5 minutes to tackle.
Attention span short? This quick video gives you the high level of what Inbox Zero means.
How the f@#! can I possibly do that?
Take it step by step! I’ll call them rules for you to follow the importance;
Rule 1 – Clean up
This one is certainly the dullest of them, but once it’s done, you’ll already be breathing easier and thinking more clearly. Set aside some time to go through your emails. Yes, all of them. Set aside an hour which will give you more than enough time. You may have 10, 100 or thousands but the idea is to clear them from your inbox. I recommend ‘archiving’ emails and not deleting as you’ll find out in future steps, your emails should be worthy or you shouldn’t be receiving them. Regardless if you go one by one, just remove anything not older than a week or if you start fresh and archive/delete everything – that’s rule 1.
Rule 2 – Frequency of Email Checking
We’re talking about productivity here. Distractions are a bad thing. This was and remains the hardest of the rules for me; Check your email during set times of the day; in the morning, twice during the day and once at the end of the day / evening. The focus here is that you spend more time doing than checking your email. Different jobs require different type of methods here but the goal (or rule) is that you don’t make it a routine to check your email and allow yourself to get distracted.
Rule 3 – You only have 3 Options
When checking your email you quickly want to categorize an email in one of the following categories; Archive, Respond, Move On. Archive anything that you do not need to act on or reference in the immediate future for any known reason. If you are achieving the email and you deem it junk mail, hit unsubscribe. Don’t think just do. If you can answer the email in under 5 minutes, answer it, archive it and move on. If it requires more time than that, ignore it but keep it in your inbox.
Rule 4 – Priorities
Your email inbox is low, you’ve started opting out of emails that don’t matter, you are consistently responding to easy emails and now you have a list of bigger – most likely more important tasks. Now what? It’s time to prioritize. Focus on accomplishing your tasks in order of your most important tasks, ideally oldest tasks (but it rarely works that way.) I recommend apps like Trello and Asana for task lists and project tracking/management… but once the email can be addressed and/or completed – I respond, act or archive it.
The steps and rules most likely sound a bit intimidating but it can be done. Once you get the tough stuff out of the way, the maintenance aspect is a breeze! If you commit to taking that first step of going through your inbox, you’ll more than make up for the time you’ve lost with the productivity you’ll gain.
This is my method for using Inbox Zero to increase my productivity and I’ve recommended it to hundreds of business professionals. With that said, everyone puts a twist on it to make it work for themselves. Give it a try, be more productive.
