How I Spend 5 Minutes Per Day on Email

Organize the messages in your e-mail in-box like you would your paper files.

3. Schedule time each day to process email and stick to Inbox Zero once every 24 hours.

This whole painful irony is especially striking in the case of email, that ingenious twentieth-century invention whereby any random person on the planet can pester you, at any time they like, and at almost no cost to themselves, by means of a digital window that sits inches from your nose, or in your pocket, throughout your working day, and often o

I recommend you file in bulk and use a full-text search engine to find your mail; use topic filing with folders or tags only if absolutely necessary. I also recommend you turn off e-mail notifications and then check e-mail no more frequently than every two to three hours; avoid getting trapped in e-mail all day.

• I treat my email inbox as my primary task manager (and note-taking tool).


• Tasks are emails I receive from others or emails I send to myself.


• I snooze emails until the week I want to get them done.


• At the beginning of each week, I go through my email todo list and block time in my calendar for each task.