When I first started out as a small virtual business, wayyyyy before we even knew what COVID-19 was, I struggled with managing multiple clients that I had and keeping everything organized.  My email was the worst!  I would skip one day and come back to my inbox with over 200+ emails to catch up on.  Needless to say this caused me to become overwhelmed and not want to even look at my inbox at all.  

Thankfully, I learned a great process that I put into action that helped not only myself, but all of our Virtual Administrative Assistants within our company to help manage our email inboxes and I wanted to share that with you. 

Though we do offer email management, there are still going to be times that you, yourself, as a business owner will need to check your inbox and filter through some of the mess.  We utilize the method called "Inbox Zero". 

 Inbox Zero is a great process for businesses or people whom receive tons of email daily and can't seem to get through it all in time.  As a result of that, you are missing out on possible new work, colleague connections for referrals, missed payments or communication with your current customers/clients.  So let's dig into what Zero Inbox is, means and how it can help you in your business or personal life.          

What is Inbox Zero?  Inbox Zero is a rigorous approach to email management at keeping your inbox empty, or almost empty.  Productivity expert Merlin Mann, came up with this wonderful process for businesses and people to utilize efficiency in managing their email.  According to Mann, the zero is not a reference to the number of messages in your inbox, but rather the amount of time your brain is in your inbox. Mann's point is that time and attention are finite, and when an inbox is confused with a "to-do list" productivity suffers.  

How do we use the Inbox Zero Process? First, we need to identify what actions we need to take for each email we receive.  Mann, identifies five possible actions for each email: Delete, Delegate, Respond, Defer and Do.  Inbox Zero, almost like a change in your daily routine is a mindset and needs to be practiced daily to stick with the routine.  So let's take the steps to implementing Inbox Zero and staying there.

1. REFRAME THE WAY YOU THINK ABOUT YOUR INBOX: Look at your inbox and see how many message have been sitting there for 24 hours or more.  If the answer is anything other than "zero", it's time to step back and reevaluate your strategy for managing email.
2. START THINKING OF EMAIL LIKE A MESSAGING SERVICE: The secret is to think of email like a messaging service: Ask yourself how you would compose any given email if it were a text message. Make it a touch more formal, perhaps, and add in pleasantries as appropriate, and there is your message.
3. STOP WRITING THE SAME STUFF OVER AND OVER:  We all have our own sets of stock emails—the standard messages we write over and over for our work or personal affairs. Maybe it’s making an introduction, declining an invitation, or sending an expected document. Whatever the case may be, you almost certainly waste your time (and test your sanity) by hammering it out repeatedly, day in and day out.  So here’s the fix: Stop repeating yourself. Almost every email service has some sort of system for creating and using templates. Take 10 minutes to create templates for all of your recurring messages, then take care of all future instances with a two-second click.
4. SEND YOUR TIME CONSUMING CLUTTER AWAY: If you’re anything like me, less than 10% of your incoming mail is actually pertinent—in other words, anything you need to know or that requires a response. And that means a staggering 90% of your email is likely doing little more than eating up your day.  Let’s cut it off at the source, shall we? First, the easy part: For the next week, unsubscribe from every list-based email you get—unless you really, truly need it or benefit from receiving it. Next, create filters for those hard to unsubscribe or recurring emails that you can't seem to get rid of.  Google's Gmail already has these preset in their platform, but it is as easy as clicking on an unwanted email and at the top marking it as junk.  That way it is never to be seen in your inbox again!
5. STOP ORGANIZING YOUR EMAIL!:  I was the worst culprit of this!  I spend hours and time setting up folders in my email and creating rules to drop them into those respective folders, NO! NO! NO!... In the physical world, devoting time to organizing documents into folders makes a lot of sense—because how else are you going to find all those papers when you need them? In the virtual world of email, however, that same system has turned into a time-wasting shackle. The fastest way to find an old email is almost always by searching—and consequently, clinging onto a dated method of meticulous label-placing and folder-filing is giving yourself extra work for no real reason. So you know what? As a wise virtual princess once said, let it go. Stop worrying about organizing all of your incoming email and just power through it. Then, when you need to find something in the future, search.
6. CONSOLIDATE YOUR EMAIL HANDLING SCHEDULE:  If you were to set out to devise the most annoying and ineffective system for email management, you’d probably come up with something where a sound or alert interrupted you every time a new message comes in, commandeering your attention and while you’re busy doing something else.  And yet that’s precisely how most of us deal with email—in the most productivity-wrecking manner possible. Study after study shows that switching tasks causes us to work less effectively and efficiently, with some research suggesting we lose as much as 40% of our productivity by hopping between multiple things. Opening up email is no exception.  So stop fighting your brain’s nature and set up a system that works with your brain instead of against it. Pick a handful of designated times throughout the day to deal with email—maybe mid-morning, after lunch, and late afternoon—and then stop peeking at your inbox outside of those windows. Set yourself up for success by keeping your email app closed by default and open only during the times you actively need it. And turn off email notifications on both your computer and your phone. If you’re worried about missing any urgent incoming messages—messages that actually demand immediate attention and can’t wait a couple hours for a response—take a few minutes to create custom notifications that’ll alert you only about those highest-priority messages. The end result is a win-win: You’ll manage your email more efficiently by tackling it in a small number of dedicated moments, and you’ll be more focused and productive with the rest of your day without the constant barrage of inbox-oriented interruptions.

Finally, here are some great email tips from Mann himself to put Inox Zero into full affect!  

Don't leave the email client open  

Process email periodically throughout the day, possibly at the top of each hour  

First, delete or archive as many of your new messages as possible  

Then forward what can best be answered by someone else  

Immediately respond to any new messages that can be answered in two minutes or less  Move new messages that require more than two minutes to answer -- and messages that can be answered later -- to a separate "Requires Response" folder.   

Set aside time each day to respond to email in the "requires response" folder or chip away at mail in this folder throughout the day.  

We hope that you found this article helpful and welcome you to return back for more helpful Tricks & Tips to help make your processes more efficient and less time consuming for you and your teams.  

- Bettia Torres - B's Virtual Admins