My inbox is my to-do list. If I talk to someone and they need something done, I tell them, “Send me an email.” If I have a task that I need to get done, I send myself an email. Because my inbox is my to-do list, I go crazy if it still has things in it at the end of the day. I know people who have hundreds or thousands of things in their inbox. I don’t know how they do it. I’d like to share with you a couple of tips that have helped me achieve something I call, “Inbox Zero.”
The first thing I do is mentioned briefly above. When someone is talking to me and they need something from me, I tell them to send me an email. My employees laugh at me about it. They all know that Dustin works by email. They can send me all the messages they want over Slack or by text message or phone call, but it probably won’t get done unless they send it to me in an email. When someone sends me an email, I can assure them that it will get done by the end of the week. I know that it will get done by the end of the week because it’s in my inbox.
And that brings me to the second tip that I have. When I have an email that I can’t get to today, I use the snooze feature (I use Gmail; there may be similar features in Yahoo or Outlook). When using this feature, I don’t accomplish whatever I need to get done in relation to the email, but I’m able to schedule it for a time that works for me. This way, I’m still able to get to “Inbox Zero” by the end of the day.
If having an inbox full of messages at the end of the day stresses you out like it does me, I encourage you to give these tips a try! They’ve been a big help for me in keeping my inbox (and my life) organized and manageable.
For more information on this subject, please listen to The Appraiser Coach Podcast Episode:
