Happiness is an empty inbox

Tonight I feel like I have a huge weight taken off my mind. Over the past few days I’ve been engaged in an exercise of Zen-like realignment. Yes, I’ve been tidying up my email inbox. That might not sound particularly significant but then you don’t know quite how disorganised my inbox was!

I’ve been a Gmail user since March 2005 and until today I’d never had an empty inbox since opening the account. Sure, I deleted unwanted email but anything I wanted to keep was left there for quick reference. With Gmail’s excellent Search capability, I reasoned, why did I need to spend time sorting and archiving my email using Gmail’s Labels feature?

At the same time, I’d occasionally forget to do important things I’d been emailed about. Last month I forgot to pay my mobile phone bill on time because the email from my network got lost half way down a page of emails from friends. While I’m generally well organised, it was clear there was a weak link, I just didn’t know what. I’d tried To-do list apps like Remember The Milk but over time I’d forget to use them and my list of jobs would become outdated as newer jobs went unlisted and relied on my fragile human memory for completion.

I was finally spurred on to a satisfactory solution when American blogger Jesse Stay posted a message on Twitter that he was teaching his 8 year-old daughter to be disciplined with her email inbox. “I am teaching her to read diligently, but keep her inbox empty”, he wrote. Suddenly I knew what I had to do. If an 8 year-old child could organise her email why was I, with 22 extra years of life experience, living with such an untidy inbox?

It was a big job, but I did it. Since Saturday I’ve been spending an hour an evening labeling and archiving my old emails. There were quite a lot of un-needed stuff that had stuck around so that got deleted and finally, at 4pm today, I achieved “Inbox Zero” for the first time in nearly four years. It felt good!

Now, as new emails arrive I deal with them. If I can’t deal with them straight away they’ll stay in the inbox but as I’m always aiming to see that “No new mail! There’s always Google News if you’re looking for something to read” notice, I know I’ll get it dealt with as promptly as possible. Can I keep it up long term? I can’t say for sure but it’s the start of a new year and when better to change some deeply ingrained behaviour?