Did you know that the average U.S. worker gets 126 emails per day? And 92% of them experienced elevated blood pressure and heart rates while handling emails at work?
If we could sum that up in one word, it would be yikes.
Truth is, as small business owners, emails are unavoidable – they’re an everyday part of work. But you might not know that they can be totally manageable with something called inbox zero.
Inbox zero is getting your inbox down to zero emails and eliminating as much clutter as possible. Before you get started, though, it’s important to remember that inbox zero isn’t necessarily achievable every single day. But if you aim to get there at least once a week, you will eliminate so much stress that comes from your inbox.
So, how exactly do you achieve inbox zero? Watch the video tutorial below, or keep reading for the step-by-step breakdown!
First things first, you want to create different inboxes. If you use Gmail, you may already notice you have separate inboxes, like Primary, Social, and Promotions. However, if you go into your Settings, you can add or remove as many inboxes as you want, including:
Once you select your inboxes, select Save Changes, and watch the initial magic start to happen! You might find that most of the emails in your Primary inbox have already been categorized into your different inboxes. How amazing is that?
From there, it will be much easier to mass delete or archive emails you don’t need to read or respond to. For example, in our ‘Updates’ inbox, we can typically select all and delete them (send them to the trash), or ‘mark as read’ (they stay in the inbox for future reference).
Keep in mind, if you don’t delete emails, your storage space may start to fill up. Our suggestion? Even if you keep emails, make it a point to go back to them every month or six months to delete what you don’t need anymore.
Pro tip: If you get any emails that you want to put in your Primary inbox or a different inbox, you can simply drag and drop them! Then, it will ask you if you always want that specific email to go into a different inbox or if it’s a one-time instance. You can also simply ‘star’ any email to automatically send it to your primary inbox.
Next, it’s time to create labels – which essentially function like folders. You can add as many as you need and color-code them for further organization. What’s also great is that you can create sub-labels under the parent labels. For example:
Once you feel good about your labels, it’s time to apply them to emails! Here’s how it works:
Think of filters as a way to automate your organization – a lot of the work is done for you! Here’s an example of what that can look like:
From there, you will see lots of options for filtering. You can:
Once you decide how you want your email to be filtered, select ‘Apply.’ If you need to edit or delete them in the future, you can find all of your filters in your Settings.
If you need to get even more granular with filters, there’s a great way to do that, too. For example, we get multiple different types of emails from Calendly, including newsletters (Promotional) and booking notifications (Primary).
If we were to apply just one broad filter on these emails, we would miss important notifications whenever someone books a call with us. So, how do we fix that?
You can filter emails further by:
From there, we add the subject line or phrases from the emails we want to be filtered in their respective inboxes and labels.
It’s not realistic to be on top of your inbox 24/7, especially on weekends or when you’re out of the office. Auto responses help set realistic expectations for those who are reaching out to you and awaiting a reply.
If you Google ‘mass unsubscribe from emails,’ you’ll find there are several different tools that can help you mass unsubscribe from emails with just a few clicks. They integrate with your inbox and generate a list of everything you’re subscribed to, so you don’t have to do it manually. Amazing, right?
If you use ClickUp – our go-to project management tool – you can download the Chrome Extension that will integrate with your email. With it, you can easily create ClickUp tasks for you or someone else (like ‘Respond to Client,’ ‘Cancel Subscription,’ or ‘Research Answer’ and attach the email.
Once you create a ClickUp task from your inbox, it automatically generates a ClickUp label. When you click on it, it will take you straight to that task in ClickUp. Talk about a time-saver!
Another feature I love about this extension? If you create and assign a task to someone else on your team, they won’t need access to your inbox to see the email – it will already be there for them in ClickUp!
Want more time saving and organizational tips? Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!
