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gjm comments on Instrumental behaviour: Inbox zero - A guide - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (12)
This seems to cover everything about getting to "inbox zero" except the nontrivial bits of actually getting to "inbox zero".
That is: I bet most people with overflowing inboxes have lots of things in those inboxes that they can neither classify immediately as "no more to do" nor resolve in a few minutes. And what stops those people getting their inboxes down to zero is (1) all the work required to deal with those things, and (2) the psychological discomfort caused by thinking about #1. And nothing in here says anything about how to deal with that situation.
I read the advice as:
If you still have unresolved emails from 2015 in your inbox then keeping emails in your inbox isn't causing them to get resolved. Accept that, get a clean slate, and move on.
Make a folder called "old inbox" and put all your old emails there. Now you have an empty inbox! The costs of putting your old emails out of sight are less than the benefits of keeping an empty inbox going forward.
I do not believe the intention of the advice given is that emails in your inbox that you feel require some reponse, but that you don't see how to deal with completely in a few minutes, should be archived and forgotten. (Perhaps I misunderstood?)
Don't know, not the original author. What do you think the chances are than an email on the third page of your inbox will ever get a reply? Inbox purgatory seems to me like a way to give up on something without having to admit it yourself.
If my inbox has more than 40 or 50 items in it I feel demoralized and find it harder to work through newer items, so the easiest way for me to stay at steady-state is to keep my inbox at zero or close to it.
Counterpoint: I've kept to an empty inbox for many years, but know people with ever-growing inboxes whom I consider more organized and responsive. I've never declared email bankruptcy during my professional life and don't know the consequences.
There is some implicit training in this process; by the time you have created "very old" and "<last year>" you are on the way to sorting things slightly better than you have before; or getting a perspective on "things that have expired or passed". I almost certainly didn't explain that very well.
I can't teach to (2) other than to say that after the activation energy (of setting up the system) it's mostly gone from every-day experience. As for (1) - dealing with things; and having a minor sorting system makes it easier to realise how much there is/isn't. and can help you actually get a handle on it.
Does that help?