The Inbox Zero Thing

⚠️ This post is more than five years old. Links may rot, opinions may change, and context might be missing. Proceed with cautious optimism.

I really, really, really, dislike “productivity” books. And gurus. And methods. And things that can generally be characterized as dogmatic.

But I like this.

My empty inbox.

I know I’m late to this party, but for years, I thought Inbox Zero was some sort of Getting Things Done-related madness involving a lot of folders and filters and whatnot.

But no, it’s not that complicated. And Merlin Mann does a great job of making it palatable, even digestible, to extend the metaphor a little deeper into the gut.

Start here, and read everything under the “Posts in the Inbox Zero series” heading before you start mashing your mouse. It won’t take you more than an hour or two to get started.

Subscribe via Email

I am RSS years old and still miss Google Reader, but if you want to get inboxed when I post here, that’s fine with me.


Comments

2 responses to “The Inbox Zero Thing”

  1. Woo hoo, congrats! My inbox is at 8 right now and I’m working down to zero.

  2. Hey Ryan, been doing this for more than a year and a half now ever since I read GTD, and not using my inbox as a to-do list has been a monster shot in the arm to my productivity ever since. I even ended up writing a blog post about it, I got so into it: http://journalistopia.com/2009/04/27/5-tips-on-managing-insane-amounts-of-e-mail

    Everyone has their own method, but I just use a Google Spreadsheet for my to-do list instead of e-mail piles. Anyway, congrats on finding inbox religion 🙂