I maintain inbox zero. I have for about a decade. People have told me they are jealous. To me it is a necessity: as a programmer I am hired, more or less, to think clearly. Reducing my cognitive load where ever I can adds to my ability to do what I love most: writing software.

Here are my techniques if you want to try:

  1. Utilize the Snooze Feature For Important Emails When you select an email in either Proton Mail or Gmail a menu appears at the top of the context window. In this menu there is a clock icon. This is the single most important tool for both emails and living in general: the snooze button.
    A lot of emails don’t need to be processed immediately or even today. Maybe you have a hour scheduled for emails, or you know that on Friday afternoon you’re going to be tired and distracted so you might as well have a low-stakes project. Snooze any emails that must be replied to for a later date.
    In fact, for this project: snooze all of them for tomorrow. Today you’re going to be zen.

  2. Declare email bankruptcy, accept you will miss some things and archive all of it I did this about a decade ago on Gmail. I archived several thousand emails and never looked back. If someone really needs to talk to you they’ll send you another email. The archive feature means you can still search for emails but you don’t need to look at them every day.
  3. When you read your email select all, deselect the mass emails that spark joy and then press delete This is my process for reading my emails. I will select all emails received and scan through looking for the ones I really want to read. I will deselect those emails. Then I will delete all the others.
  4. If you want to go back to an email snooze it, don’t leave it The purpose of inbox zero is to reduce your cognitive load. That email you are meaning to read will sit in your inbox cluttering things up. Snooze it until you have time and mental space to read it. It also gives you a notification when the snooze period is over to spur you into completing the task, and thus gives you a tiny dopamine hit.
  5. Unsubscribe unsubscribe unsubscribe Legally all mass emails require an “Unsubscribe” button. The habit you want to get into is unsubscribing rather than being annoyed and deleting the email. This generates better email for everyone – it provides a market signal that business people have to pay attention to. “Our emails are annoying so people are unsubscribing” is a great metric that I wish politicians would pay attention to.
  6. Remove all social media notification emails Keep social media out of your email – these megacorps have people with PHD’s studying addiction working for them to trigger your response. Don’t worry: you’ll remember to open TikTok. Never allow an email from social media to hit your inbox. If it arrives send it to the spam folder immediately.