Taming the Inbox Dragon

Navigating the daily onslaught of emails—both receiving and giving—is a constant struggle for many who work in community organizing, communications, management, and other professions.

A most beautiful and elusive sight

When you think of logging into your email, what is the first emotion that comes to you? For me, opening my inbox prompts a fight-or-flight response. Email is the hunter, and I am prey. However, I am rocking a whopping five days of Inbox Zero, which is four days more than my previous all-time record. It might have something to do with the fact that I currently only have one inbox, but it’s been helped by a few tricks that I learned from my time as Content Manager at NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network.

I recently bundled some (Gmail-centric) inbox and email/social management tips I’ve learned from smarty pantses I’m lucky to know, and I presented to a few of my Emerge Oregon sisters in the form of a slideshow:

Here are links to the cast of characters noted in the slideshow:

• Unroll Me
• Boomerang
• Canned responses: it’s already in your Gmail! Check “Labs” under Settings
• Buffer
• Tweetdeck

I mentioned that I have been rocking inbox zero for five days. That streak could end in an hour or a week. That’s fine. My priority is shifting my email MO. I’m actively working on creating new behaviors around emails as they come in, that reduce the fear of the unknown and assumed-but-not-confirmed-because-I-haven’t-actually-opened-that-email-I’m-just-looking-sideways-at-it issues (you know what I’m talking about).

Inbox zero is a construct that can be useful in breaking the stress of a cluttered inbox, but it can also lead to “mailshaming,” as Joe Newlin put it in this anti-zero article.

Good luck out there, team. Be good to each other, and don’t let your inbox get you down.

What I learned at life today: While I can’t (completely) control the inflow of emails I receive, I can control how I greet them. Procrastination, like boredom, is a choice.

Featured image photo credit: Paul Downey