TCFBO #017: Inbox 80% Productivity Hack

Read Time: Less than 1 minute

Here’s a quick email productivity hack that will help keep you focused on your priorities and not everyone elses.

Grab your email client and create a new folder called “Inbox 80%”.

Set up a rule in your email client to send ALL your emails to that folder.

For the next seven days, monitor the emails that come into that folder at the same frequency you would usually monitor emails that come into your Inbox.

So if you usually check your email Inbox every five minutes, go right ahead and check the “Inbox 80%” every five minutes.

If an email comes into that folder that’s really important, (e.g. an email from your top client or an email about a priority project you’re currently working on), set up a rule that means future emails of this importance arrive in your main Inbox.

Bear in mind, less than 20% of the emails you receive will fall into this “Important” category.

By the end of the week your most important emails will be arriving in your Inbox and everything else (i.e. the stuff that can wait, be ignored, deleted, or unsubscribed from) will be heading to your “Inbox 80%” folder.

In the second week, check you “Inbox 80%” folder once a day.

If something important has dropped in there, create a rule so it arrives in your Inbox.

In the third week, check your “Inbox 80%” folder every other day.

Again, create a rule for important stuff to go to your Inbox.

In the fourth week, check your “Inbox 80%” folder just once during the week.

We implemented this system about ten years ago and have never looked back.

Once a week we skim the “Inbox 80%” folder to see if anything important has ended up in there.

The only emails that come into our Inbox are from people we consider important enough to warrant our attention within 24 hours of receiving their email.

In our case, this is each other, clients, and people who are working with us on priority projects (personal and business).

The rest end up in our “Inbox 80%”.

We also ruthlessly unsubsubscribe from email newsletters that are no longer important to us.

That doesn’t mean we don’t subscribe to new stuff.

It just means we’re checking on a weekly basis whether the email lists we’re subscribed to are relevant to what we are doing right now.

If they’re not, we unsubscribe.

We can always resubscribe in the future if that information becomes relevant again for what we are working on.

You’ll be amazed at how much head space this hack gives you.

You’ll be even more amazed at how much head space our “app productivity hack” gives you…but we’ll save that for another day.

Let us know how you get on and we’ll see you next week.

Paul & Philly

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