One of the holy grails of personal productivity is “inbox zero”: the (sometimes blissful) state of having nothing in your email inbox, your in-tray, and your other “in” receptacles because you’ve dealt with each item: clarifying what you want to do about it and then either doing it immediately or creating a reminder to do it later.
Inbox zero is worthy goal to be sure. But for many, it might not be something that can be accomplished in one day. And the problem with distant goals is that it can be easy to procrastinate making progress toward them. The more we procrastinate on this goal, the more we get behind on our inboxes until inbox zero seems like a pipe dream.
To avoid that, it can be useful to give yourself an attainable daily inbox goal.
For example, you can aim for the daily target of clearing every item that’s been added to your inbox in the past 24 hours (or since your last inbox processing session). That’s the minimum for keeping up with the influx and preventing further inbox accumulation. And it won’t get to you to inbox zero. But, it’s a lot better than many do, and if you’re not doing it yet, it’s a worthy daily goal to shoot for and an immensely helpful habit to build.
To make progress toward inbox zero, you can give yourself a daily “stretch goal” to also clear every item that was added to your inbox on one recent calendar day. Every time you meet or exceed that stretch goal, you will shrink your backlog by at least one day.
As you develop the habit of doing this daily, clarifying your inbox items will become easier and faster (especially if you develop techniques for bulk purging, using email filters and other tools). As that happens, you can periodically “raise the bar” for yourself by increasing your stretch goal to processing two days worth of backlog, or three, or four, etc. As your clarity-creating inbox purge accellerates, the promise land of inbox zero will begin to appear on your mind’s horizon. And that will build motivational momentum to race (but not rush) to the finish.
This is a better way to get to inbox zero than “declaring inbox bankruptcy” as some advise, because it avoids losing any value or missing any dangers lurking in your backlog. If you worry there might be missed opportunities or pitfalls ahead because you swept too much under the rug, you will not enjoy the peace of mind that inbox zero is meant to help you attain.
As the medieval French adage says, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” And months’ worth of backlog can’t be meaningfully cleared in a day. But as a Chinese proverb says, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” You can pave your path to inbox zero one day at a time.