Several months ago, I began a quest to keep my e-mail inbox in control. Since that time, I’ve had a very good experience at keeping the actual number of e-mails in my inbox at any one time at zero. At most, I might let an e-mail languish for a couple of hours, but I’ve gone to be every single night since I started this process with no e-mails in my inbox.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t have e-mails that need to be addressed eventually, but every single incoming e-mail has been reviewed. When an e-mail comes in, there are four things that I can do with it:

• Read the e-mail in it’s entirety and respond to it
• Defer the e-mail for later action
• File the e-mail for reference
• Delete the e-mail

Prior to deleting an e-mail, I’ve done a good job of assessing if this is the default action for e-mails from this sender. If that’s the case, then I’ve taken to unsubscribing to that e-mail feed. I’ve been somewhat frustrated with a couple of e-mail senders who continue to send e-mail weeks after the unsubscription process has been completed. But for the most part, when I unsubscribe I quit receiving e-mail within a few days or maybe a week.

The simple step of actively unsubscribing to e-mail feeds has cut down the number of incoming e-mails a significant amount. This has had the added benefit of distilling my incoming e-mail into items that are of greater importance of me.

Because I have fewer e-mails in my inbox, I’ve also found that I am willing to read through the important once and respond to them. David Allen, in Getting Things Done talks about using the Two-Minute Rule. That is, if you can complete the action called for in an e-mail within two-minutes, you should do it right away. I’ve actually expanded this to a five-minute rule as the number of e-mails in my box at any one time has diminished. This also fits fairly well with my recent shift to trying to use snippets of time to get work done. I’ve discovered that I can safely spend five minutes performing almost any task, and there are lots of five-minute windows available to me.

One issue that I’m still struggling with revolves around the processing of deferred e-mail. I get a lot of e-mail that is only of nominal importance at the moment. For instance, I get about 50 advertising e-mails a day from sources like Best Buy, Apple, Kroger, Wal-Mart, etc. These are often the their weekly advertisements. I only need to review these ads prior to going to the store, or making a list for things to purchase. Therefore, when they arrive, I usually file them in a folder called @Review/Ads. Then the theory is that I will review the folder before going shopping. Once I’ve reviewed an Ad, I’d also planned on deleting it from the folder. This would keep the folder neat and tidy, with only the most recent ads, containing the most pertinent information. In reality, I’ve gotten into the habit of pretty much ignoring the folder. Occasionally I’ll look at an ad and make a buying decision, but seldom (OK, pretty much 100% of the time) I opt not to delete the e-mail.

This has created a scenario where there are lots and lots of emails containing ads that have accumulated over time. I’m contemplating simply bulk-erasing everything older than a week in this folder, but I have some reservations. Oftentimes I have saved ads to jog my memory for a purchase that I want to make. Sometimes the ad contained an item that I wanted to consider for a gift. With eight kids, I’m always looking for gift ideas. The issue is that I didn’t differentiate the ads that were saved for a purpose versus those that were simply dumped into the folder just in case I wanted to review them later.

This means that I have two different kinds of e-mails in the same folder. This is a demonstration of a not best practice, and one that I need to address. I’ve found this scenario in several different folders where I have e-mails doing two different things both residing in the same folder. In some cases I’ve created another folder (or two subfolders) to address this situation. Unfortunately, in many cases I haven’t come up with a good solution.

So, my latest plan is to go through the @Review/Ads folder and extract those e-mails that are gift ideas. They will be move to the @Gift Ideas folder (I’m pretty simplistic when it comes to the folder names…they are descriptive to a fault). The remainder of the e-mails will be deleted.

The @Review/Ads folder is a fairly straightforward folder to process. There are several other folders that are going to take a lot more thought. Several weeks ago, I created a calendar reminder to address several of my deferral folders. I dutifully have gotten the reminder every week. And I have dutifully either deferred the reminder a couple of times, or simply acknowledged the reminder. Only once over that time period have I actually processed the deferred e-mails.

With the number of incoming e-mails that I’ve had, the number of deferred e-mails is pretty significant. I know I need to process these. In fact, I’m kind of defeating the purpose of Inbox Zero if I defer e-mails and let them languish elsewhere. All I’m doing is trading a sense of calm and control by having an empty inbox with a foreboding sense of dread that I’ve got hidden folders with hundreds upon hundreds of e-mails waiting for me to decide what needs to be done with them.

So I’ve been pretty proud of myself for getting my inbox cleaned up, and I’ve been even more pleased with myself for being able to keep the inbox at zero e-mails. While this is a significant accomplishment, I need to take the next step and process through the backlog of deferred e-mails. I’m anticipating learning more about what e-mails I should unsubscribe from, and what other things I can do to reduce the sheer number of incoming email.

I’m also planning on implementing this process with my physical mail. I’ve been traveling almost non-stop for the past six weeks, so I haven’t spent enough time in my home office to even begin the process of Inbox Zero on my physical mail to any significant degree. But I did take one small step in this direction. During my travel, I delegated the task of getting the mail to my 11 year-old daughter. She not only retrieves the mail, but she then sorts the mail based on who it’s addressed to. We have inboxes for every family member, so she distributes the mail into the inboxes. She’s also getting better at identifying magazines and catalogs and appropriating those out to the correct collection locations. I was somewhat surprised at her initial difficulty in determining which items were catalogs and which were magazines. She pointed out that, for instance, the Eastbay catalog has a lot of text in to, and several athlete stories. To her, this wasn’t a lot different than, for instance Time magazine, that has an awful lot of ads. We went over several examples, and after a few false starts, she’s separating magazines and catalogs about as well as I do.

With the start of next month, we will begin a process of mailing off the received e-mail for the five family members who are no longer living in the house. Two are college students, so they will retain our address as their home address for a couple more years. Three have moved out and have begun the process of having their mailing address changed. It’s fascinating how long this takes and how many times the same really old mailing lists are sold and resold. We will continue to get e-mail for the Diaspora family members, but I’m hoping that the quantity will diminish with time. Of course, that probably means that I have to nag them a little bit to update their addresses with those folks who continue to mail them at home.

The bottom line is that my progress towards Inbox Zero has given me a sense of control over my e-mail, even if it’s a little bit false. I do know that very few important e-mails are slipping through the cracks. This by itself is not only rewarding, but has made me seem much more in control. While I still have a long way to go in getting all my e-mail managed, I’ve come a long way.

How about you, have you given Inbox Zero a try? If not, what’s stopping you?

Make it a great day!