Help With Admin Guide To Inbox Zero

Does it fill you with dread looking at your inbox?

Can you easily find the email you are looking for?

Do email go unanswered because they have dropped out of view?

Do you dream of Inbox Zero?

What Is Inbox Zero
Inbox Zero is when there are no emails in your inbox, all of your emails have been dealt with in one of 3 ways.

In the Help With Admin guide to Inbox Zero here are the 3 things you need to be carrying out whenever you are in your email inbox:-

1) Delete
Get rid of all your junk mail, put in your trash can and filter down to the emails that matter.

While you are in the process of deleting those emails make sure you click on the ‘Unsubscribe’ button to save you time from your deleting chores in the future.

2) Delegate
Does it need to be answered by you? Can somebody answer it better? Has it come to you by mistake? Just because it is in your inbox does not mean to say you need to deal with it.

If it is not directly about your job role pass the email on to the department it is, If it is about a topic someone was telling you about instead of trying to remember what they said pass the email to them as they are the experts in that area and if it has come to you by mistake pass it on to somebody who can deal with it and cc the sender to alert them to their error in addressing it to you in the first place.

3) Defer
Unless you are working on that topic or that client at that precise moment then defer all your emails.

Move them out of your inbox into a separate folder. There are many ways you can split the emails, you could have a separate folder for each client, each day of the week, each project or actions such as read/reply/store.

The other key thing to do is only look at your inbox 2 or 3 times a day, maybe first thing, lunchtime and at the end of the day and for all you emails delete, delegate or defer them then get on with your work and only look at the specific folder you need to when working on a task. Everything you need should be in that one place making it less likely for you to get distracted by something outside the range of the task you are currently doing because it is not in that specific box to catch you eye.