The Concept of Inbox Zero

Communication is the quintessential aspect that is linked to effective leadership and corporate governance. Of all the several forms of communication available, electronic mail or e-mail is the most effective and yet – the most overlooked aspect.

In our day-to-day professional lives, we receive multiple emails with various levels of priorities. Not only this, we receive emails from individuals at various levels of hierarchy in our organisations. With all this happening in a span of few hours, it seldom becomes a challenge to keep a track of the email inflow and in the process, respond to our emails in a prompt manner. Seldom there will be a time where everyone are caught up with our own things and do not respond to their emails promptly. There could be an email that needed an immediate attention or it could be even something that has to be acted upon as a priority. This arises to an unpleasant thing known as miscommunication.

To overcome this challenge, Merlin Mann, a corporate professional from the United States suggests an approach he termed as Inbox Zero – an action based email. By Zero Inbox, he doesn't mean to clean up our inboxes at all times. What he does suggest instead is to categorise and organize our emails and in the process, convert our emails into appropriate actions as quickly as possible.

Every email that we receive is categorised in one of the following four categories:

1. Action Required

2. Awaiting Response

3. Delegated

4. Archived

It may not be ideal to advise someone to reply to their emails at the same moment we receive it. But, sometimes, a simple message saying '” Received your email – I will get back to you would do a lot of good to avoid a certain miscommunication than it would otherwise do by not replying to an email at all in the first place. For this to happen in an effective way, one has to categorise ones emails. Each and everyone of us have a different approach on how we categorise or organise our emails – this primarily depends on our business needs. I follow a nested approach of classification i.e., folder within a folder. This means that I have a rule applied to an individual sender directed to a specific folder and within that folder, I would probably have sub-folders with rules applied on basis of the subject line.

This folder structure is described in the table below:

<name of the sender #1>
<subject line #1>
<subject line #2>

Thus effective communication sets the tone apart in every organisation. And the if the same thing comes from someone in a managerial position, it paves way for a great professional culture within that organization.

Now that we spoke in depth about what Inbox Zero is and how it works, let us learn more about some of the best practices of using implementing Inbox Zero:

1. Staying near Inbox Zero

2. Processing to Zero

3. Pareto Principle

4. The email filters and their benefits

5. Inbox Zero – The action associated

1. Staying near Inbox Zero

Maintaining Inbox Zero may not be achievable at all times. It is instead a process through which one tries to attain a phenomenon known as Email Sanity. Techniques such as being selective on receiving emails, laying emphasis on the folders and filters, staying away from the spam, deciding whether to respond to emails the moment we receive it or at a later stage should help.

2. Processing to Zero

The more email you have been avoiding to read from your inbox, the more challenging your email processing is going to be. Let us say you have a good number of unread messages in the backlog, the ideal way is to be clear on your judgement on something that best removes your blocks and gets you through the pile with your sanity intact.

3. The Pareto principle in emails

The Pareto Principle talks about small percentage of processes cause a large percentage of problems. In other words, we can also say: 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Put it in an email perspective, it is safe to say that 80% of the email overload is caused by 20% of our emails. This could be subscribing to something, or having multiple emails in the same email thread. For instance, you have 24 email conversations on a single subject line – can be avoided by scheduling a call amongst all the recipients of the emails, have a discussion and come to a concrete understanding or outcome. This will probably bring down the thread to only 6 conversations. This saves loads of valuable time; something which can be utilised to focus on other areas.

4. The email filters and their benefits

Filters and scripts pave way in minimalizing the manual processing we do each day as well as way cut down on unnecessary interruptions to a great extent. The problem arises when we filter too much on the basis such as: “sender” and “subject” or even a nested approach such as “subject within a sender”. This might lead to a case where we actually miss on something important because we filter too much. Having said that, it all depends on how efficiently one applies filters to our emails.

5. Inbox Zero – The action associated

With the concept of Inbox Zero, the prime area of concentration has to be on identifying the quickest and the direct path from receiving your email to completing it or in other words, taking an appropriate action.

David Allen in his book: Getting Things Done – The Art of Stress-Free productivity writes about answering the following questions about every email message that you receive in your inbox.

1. What does this message mean to me, and why do I care?

2. What action, if any, does this message require of me?

3. What's the most elegant way to close out this message and the nested action it contains?

All the there questions described above lay emphasis in identifying your best use of interest, attention,and time.

Conclusion:

Inbox Zero is a process through which one tries to attain email sanity, i.e., organise, schedule, and respond to your emails in the most time-efficient manner. As James Humes says: Communication is the art of leadership, an effective communication paves way to a professional and a healthy work environment.

References:

• www.43folders.com/2004/09/08/getting-started-with-getting-things-done
• www.43folders.com/izero
• Getting Things Done – The art of Stress-Free productivity by David Allen