Inbox Zero: The Ultimate Productivity Hack For Entrepreneurs

Declutter your mind by decluttering your inbox. Yes. Today I am sharing with you one of my favorite productivity methods of all time. Inbox Zero. So what is it? And do you really need to have like zero emails in your inbox in order to be more productive? And how the heck do you even get started organizing an inbox with hundreds or even thousands of unread emails? Yes. You know who you are. We're going to talk about all of that and more in this video, so keep watching. Watching. Hey, posse, what's up? It's Alex. I am very excited for this video because inbox management is something I really, really geek out about. I know it sounds nerdy, but I live and breathe by my inbox. And trust me, once you achieve the satisfaction of a perfectly organized inbox where you are in complete control, control, you will never go back. You will feel so good. You'll feel so on your game, like a proper entrepreneur and a proper business owner. Your inbox is really important and you should treat it as such, especially if you're trying to start or grow your business. But you do want to be careful too, because I will never forget this quote that my friend Brendon Burchard tweeted literally over 10 years ago, and it has stuck with me ever since I started my business. Beware of your inbox. It is nothing but a community convenient organizing system for other people's agendas. Ain't that the truth? So if you're checking your inbox, like first thing in the morning and you're letting other people dictate how you run your day, then maybe that's something you need to look at. But listen, we're not talking about that today. That's like a whole other video on boundaries and all of that. Today we are talking about how to manage your inbox. But before we get to that, be totally honest. How many unread emails do you have in your inbox right now? Comment below and let me know. I won't lie. That red little email notification icon makes me break out in hives. So I literally had to turn it off once and for all and stop letting my inbox and other people's agendas control me and control my day. So I promise, once you do the steps in this video, you will never feel so free thanks to your new inbox. Boundaries. Yes, that is a thing. And I could talk about it forever. So in this video, I. I'm actually going to take you through my inbox so you can see what I do to manage the tons of emails that I get every single day. And I'll explain how to get started with Inbox Zero. I promise it's not as complicated or overwhelming as it sounds. Plus, I will show you all of my favorite inbox management tips and tricks like the filters and labels and everything that I use inside my Gmail account. But before we get to that, if you're new to the crew, welcome. My channel is here to help all my entrepreneurs, business owners, copywriters and freelancers out there build a business that works Works for you. So if you're not already subscribed, go ahead and hit that subscribe button below. And don't forget to hit that bell to be notified when my next video goes live. All right, now before I show you my inbox and how I have everything set up, let's first do a quick background on what Inbox Zero is originally created by Merlin Mann, who has several podcasts dedicated to helping you find the time and attention to do your best creative work. The idea behind Inbox Zero is to help employees or hey, freelancers and business owners develop a more casual relationship with email. So the goal is not to achieve a constantly empty inbox like the name might imply, or to read and respond to every single email immediately. No, the goal is to keep your inbox organized by giving each email an immediate action. So man's steps follow five main actions. Delete, delegate, respond, respond, defer, and do. I hate that respond doesn't start with a D, but I can see why he didn't pick a word that started with D, because I don't think there's a cinnamon cinnamon synonym to the word respond that starts with a D. But anyway, here's how it works. The five Rules of Inbox zero so the goal of Inbox zero is that you log into your inbox each day when it works for you, not first thing in the morning. And every email is acted upon immediately. So if you follow this method to a T, you will either one Delete the email. So ask yourself, does this email require a response? Is it junk? Is it spam, or a newsletter that you just don't really care to read? The first step in Inbox Zero is just to immediately, like, clear out any unnecessary emails. And I mean, right there, you've probably dealt with over half of the emails in your inbox, like immediately, number two delegate. So ask yourself, are you the right person to respond to this email? Email? If you're a solopreneur or a freelancer, the answer is probably yes, right? Because you might not have a team yet. But this one is particularly useful for business owners who do have a VA or a team. Delegating is a very powerful tool to ensure you are not taking on any more unnecessary work or having, you know, tons and tons and tons of things on your plate when there's someone else who could do it better or faster. Number three is to respond, right? So if you get an email that only needs a quick response, do it right now, not later. This one thing will prevent so many things from slipping through the cracks. I mean, we have all done it, right? I am so guilty of this, especially if I'm really, really busy. But you read an email and then you think to yourself, okay, I'll just get back to them later today. And then the next thing you know, it's been six days and they're sending you a follow up email and you're like, oh my God, I feel so terrible. But you didn't get back to them because your email got lost in like the sea of emails that are flooding in your inbox every day. Right? So this rule mainly applies to every more transactional emails like yes, no, this, that type of emails, ones that don't really require you to sit down and think too much or plan out a response or a proposal or any sort of plan. Right? So a good rule of thumb is to respond to emails that require five minutes or less of your time. Just get those out of the way, respond to them asap. Number four is to defer. So if the email does require a more in depth response response or it isn't an immediate priority, move it to a specified location in your inbox and then come back to it later. Of course, the key here is that you don't just leave it sitting in your general inbox where it's going to get like drowned out by all the other noise. Remember, Inbox zero is about streamlining and organizing your inbox so you know, you know where everything is. Everything has a place and you are in control. So I have different folders and labels and sections set up in my inbox to keep everything really organized. And the section of my inbox named Pending really helps me keep track of those emails that aren't urgent and do not require like an immediate action or response or the ones where I just need to take a little bit more time to craft my response. So I try to get back to those emails within three to five business days and I will take you through my inbox and show you exactly how I have it set up so that you can See how you can do it too. And I promise it's super easy. Now, there is one more category we need to talk about first, and that is number five, do so. The last step of Inbox Zero is to work on the things that matter most and need your immediate attention. And oftentimes these emails require a task or some sort of related action. Again, if you don't have the time right, if it takes more than five minutes and you don't have the time to sit down right now and get back to this person, then move that email to a specific location in your inbox to that is for priority emails that need a response asap. So in my inbox I have a label that's called needs response. And these emails are a priority and I try to get back to them that day or maybe the next day at the latest. And you could get really super fancy with this and integrate your inbox with project management tools like Asana. That way you can create a task for yourself to actually get back to those emails with the due date and all of that. I don't personally do that right now now, but depending on the size of your business and how many emails you receive every day, and whether or not you have a VA helping you with inbox management, this might be something that you want to look into. And I think it's a smart idea. It helps keep you organized and on track. So that is what Inbox Zero is. Now let me show you how to set up an Inbox Zero system utilizing some of my favorite Inbox tools. Now, I use Gmail, so that's what I'm going to show you. But keep in mind that these concepts could work pretty, pretty much in any email provider you use. The tools might just look a little bit different. All right, so this is my inbox. Doesn't it look pretty? Right? So you can see here that I actually have four sections in my inbox. Needs response, pending read only, and everything else. So as I mentioned earlier, anything that is sorted as needs response, that tag is applied and it appears here in the top of my inbox that these are emails that I want to get back to in the next one or two days. Then you have pending here, which are emails that I do need to respond to, but they don't require like an urgent response or I need to gather more information or time in order to craft a response. So then you can see I have this section read only. Now, this is important information that I didn't want to archive because I still want to be able to Reference it. So oftentimes they're like documents or processes or something that I want to have, you know, accessible in my inbox to refer back to. I will put that under read only. And then down here you have everything else. So this is actually the sort of actual inbox, if you will, where all new emails land. So any emails in this section just haven't been sorted yet. And this is where a lot of like my Asana notifications go and things like that. Everything else lands here. Now, if you're wondering, wait, how does she set up her inbox where there's multiple sections? Let me show you. You want to go up to where it says settings and click over to see all settings. Then you're going to go over to where it says inbox and scroll down to where it says inbox sections. So this is where you set up your sections. Of course, you could use the same ones as me or you can set up your own. It really depends on your business and what kind of emails you want to have accessible and not just archived or deleted. So this is where you set up the sections and you can also set options. So you can choose to mark it as important and unread. You can star it. You know, you can do a lot of things once you apply these tags. And in order to move emails to these sections, all you have to do is apply those tags. Okay, so now I'm back in my main inbox and now that you see these sections, you know, okay, great. Every time a new email comes in into this everything else section, I just go ahead and I tag it as email either read only pending or needs response. Now, of course, not every single email you get will actually fall into one of those categories. Now here's where my system differs a little bit than Inbox zero. I actually don't delete any emails. I'm someone who likes to go back to emails and I don't want to ever delete a conversation because at least with Gmail, once you actually delete it, like delete it, I think you have 30 days to go back and see it and then it is gone. So I actually only archive emails and then they get saved, you know, behind the scenes under all mail, which you can go to here and it'll still show you all the archived emails. If you need to go back and reference like an old client conversation or something, it's still there even if you don't label it. With that being said, I still have some other labels that I use that don't correspond respond to the inbox sections. And those are things that I want to go back to, and I know for sure I will want to go back to them. So you can see here the labels I have. So there's the obvious ones need response pending and read only. But I also have a label called Corp Docs. So this is like tax returns, contracts, like any important documents that you know at some point you're going to want to reference again, whether it's like tax season or whatever. Right? Then I have Inspo. And if you've watched any of my videos before, you know I talk a lot about creating your Inspo folder. So this is where I put a ton of different emails from newsletters that I'm on after I read them, and I'm like, oh my God, that email is so good. I want to put this in my inspo file. So if I ever need, you know, inspiration for webinar emails or abandoned cart emails or any other type of email, I literally have this amazing, amazing inspo file to go back and refer to. I also have a tag called receipts. So when you work for yourself and you pay for like a bazillion jillion online tools and you get a receipt every month, you want to be able to come tax time. I'm sorry to keep mentioning tax time. I know that's like a little bit anxiety inducing, but you want to be able to go back and see all of your online receipts anyway in one location. So those are my labels. If you want to create a label, it's really easy. You just click on this little plus sign here and and you can create a new label. Your labels might look different than mine, but by all means, go ahead and use the same ones that I have here. Remember the goal of labels. It's not to like label every single email that comes in because then your sidebar over here is going to look cluttered and it's going to look messy. So the goal is not to tag every single email. It's to have categories that you know you'll want to refer back to. Every other email that I don't tag, it still lives in my All Mail Friends folder because like I said, I don't delete anything. I just archive it. And this is how I keep my inbox super tidy. And every single morning when I log in, I know exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to filter my everything else, respond to the ones I need to respond to immediately. And that way, at the end of the day, I don't feel like this you know, my inbox is this big looming thing over me. All right, guys, so that was my inbox and that is how I use Inbox Zero. I've been using this for for a few years now and honestly, it saves me so much time and really helps me stay on track and make sure nothing slips through the cracks. I hope this was helpful for you. If you have any questions about productivity tips, how I run my business, or Inbox Zero, drop them below and I'll try to get back to you. And hey, if you're not already on my email list, what are you doing? Get on it. You can click the link in the description box below to sign up for weekly copywriting, marketing and branding emails from yours truly. And I will see you next week with a brand new video. Until then, I'm Alex. Ciao for now. All right, guys, if you enjoyed that video, make sure to check out the next one from me right here. And you can click right here to get a free gift. A few months ago, I made $96,924 in seven days from launching one product. And in this video, I'm going to break down the biggest lessons I learned, what worked, what didn't, and what I wish I would have done differently. That way, you can take these lessons and apply them to your next launch or promotion to see even better results. Keep watching.