The Case for an Empty Inbox – Habits of Excellence

A clean inbox is the sign of a well-managed desk… Read more.

During last year’s Clean Out Your Inbox Week, we have been challenging all business and office workers to unite in the effort to clean out their inboxes and develop healthy e-mail habits. Collectively, this has the potential to recover countless hours of productivity and can save the U.S. economy billions of dollars annually.

However, the concept of a clean inbox is almost always met with resistance. Arguably, everyone wishes their inboxes to be orderly — that is not a revelation. The tension people have with the idea of a clean inbox is that they associate it with having all the work that comes from the inbox handled and completed. And that is virtually impossible.

The solution? We need to adjust the way we think about an empty inbox. Cleaning it out does not mean working on every item that is in the inbox; it means moving each e-mail to a more logical holding area where it can be accessed at the appropriate time. Triaging your work and setting the right priorities is an effective way to do this.

Today’s Tip: Make emptying your inbox a habit. Do it every workday and see how much more organized, easy-to-use, and stress-free your inbox can be. If your inbox has an overwhelming number of e-mails right now, set a goal to empty a specific number of e-mails out each day and stick to it. After the inbox reaches zero, it’s a snap to keep it that way.