This morning I had 60 new emails in my inbox, here’s how ho…

1/ @jspujji is the master of Inbox 0 & was my guide

He built his own sw stack of plugins to optimize his inbox. But now, gmail & Superhuman offer most of these features

The path to Inbox 0 is a stool with 3 legs: shortcuts, batched emails, & the 4 Ds, w/o one, it will fall

2/ The key to making Inbox Zero happen quickly is shortcuts.

Gmail requires you to enable them, but once you do, it’s like doing emails in Excel!

Any Excel junkies in the house?

You can enable them in settings

3/ A common retort is “but it’s faster to use my mouse than look up the shortcut every time”

Wrong!

It’s faster, because you don’t know them yet. Once you look them up a few times, you’ll remember them and be blazing through your inbox in no time

4/ Viewing the full list of shortcuts is always one shortcut away!

Shift + ?

And the full list appears on your screen

5/ Once I started to learn and practice these shortcuts, I felt like man discovering the wheel for the first time.

It just makes everything easier!

6/ Each person is different, but I’ve found the most useful are:

g+i = go to inbox
c = compose
r = reply
a = reply all
x = select
e = archive

7/ While technically not a shortcut, enabling “auto-advance” is critical to giving you the speed you need

Once you’re done with one email, gmail will automatically go to the next one (no going back to your inbox after each email)

Changeable in your settings

7/ The simplest pillar of this Inbox Zero method is batching your emails throughout the day

20mins in the morning, 20mins around lunch, and 20mins in the evening is all it takes

Without time boxing, your stool is missing a leg and will fall

8/ Once you’ve set the time aside, how should you approach your inbox?

60 emails can be very intimidating, but with the following framework in mind, it’s much easier to quickly process your emails

9/ The framework is the 4 Ds

Delete, Delegate, Defer, and Do

10/ Delete:

If you don’t need to respond and no follow up is required, go ahead and delete it!

11/ Delegate:

If this requires something from someone else on your team, go ahead and hit that forward button

12/ Defer:

This was the biggest unlock for me

If the email requires more than 2 minutes to handle, hit the “snooze button”

It’s a game changer.

Once you turn on Gmail shortcuts, hit “b” and it’ll feel as good as hitting snooze on your alarm

13/ If a longer response is needed, set aside time. Then snooze the email to that exact time & it will pop up when you need it.

You might be inclined to take 30min to do the task (throwing you off your quest to inbox 0) or you may leave it in your inbox. Don’t do these things.

14/ Leaving it in your inbox is the most dangerous thing you can do

Because, as these emails stack up, you’ll likely start to forget about them

This can lead to slowed decision making or in some cases no decision being made at all

An entrepreneur’s nightmare

15/ Think you’re a snoozing pro and want more features?

Check out @boomerang, they offer advanced snoozing functionality

The downside? It’s 5 bucks a month to access all the feature

16/ Do:

If it takes less than 2 minutes to write a response or complete an action, then DO IT!

17/ A common question is “what about newsletters?”

These usually take more than 2 min to “do”

You have two options: snooze them to a specific time in your week you’ve set aside for reading newsletters or use a 3rd party tool like @sanebox to manage them

18/ Another question that comes up is how to use the “stars” or folders in gmail?

The answer: don’t

These are simply ways to prevent you from achieving Inbox Zero

19/ To recap, how did I crush 60 emails in 15 minutes?

By using the 4 Ds, batching emails, and dancing on the keyboard with shortcuts

20/ If you liked this thread and want to learn more as we build DTC brands at @GatewayX, be sure to follow @iansavas

This morning I had 60 new emails in my inbox, here’s how how I crushed it in <15 minutes

For the first time in years, my inbox hits Zero everyday and yours can too

This is the simple method that will give you back hours
⬇️⬇️⬇️

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This morning I had 60 new emails in my inbox, here’s how how I crushed it in <15 minutesFor the first time in years, my inbox hits Zero everyday and yours can tooThis is the simple method that will give you back hours⬇️⬇️⬇️

More from All

You May Also Like

This morning I had 60 new emails in my inbox, here’s how how I crushed it in <15 minutes

For the first time in years, my inbox hits Zero everyday and yours can too

This is the simple method that will give you back hours
⬇️⬇️⬇️