What is inbox zero? In a nutshell, it’s the goal of having absolutely no unread emails sitting in your inbox and reminding you that more work still needs to be done. It sounds quite simple but the majority of people who have ever attempted to achieve it failed. because they approached Inbox Zero wrong.

Without the right Zero Inbox rule-based strategy, new emails will keep coming and coming, constantly taking the status of Inbox Zero away from you. 

The Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, says that about 80% of the impacts are caused by 20% of the causes. This principle can also be implemented in email management as only about 20% of emails are worthy of our attention.

There’s no way how you can stop the endless flow of emails to your inbox, so it’s very important to make your email management efforts as consistent as possible. You should check your inbox first thing in the morning before you start your work and then a few more times throughout the day. If you have multiple emails, download an app like Edison Mail with a built-in email assistant that can help keep your inboxes organized and easier to clean.

You can save yourself a lot of time if you delete every junk email you see without opening it because most likely you can recognize them as soon as you see them in your inbox. 

You should always respond to every important email you open immediately. Better keep your responses short and to the point because the person you write to is probably as busy as you are.

And the last thing is that users can an Inbox Zero app to automate the organization and remove emails they don’t need. There are several Inbox Zero apps that you can choose from though we enjoy Clean Email the most.

Read some more tips about controlling email inboxes here.