I broke down and wrote 3 immutable rules for managing your inbox

The Daily Drip

Monday morning is always hardest on my inbox.

I don't check email on the weekends and I have notifications turned off, always.

This means that Monday morning gets a pileup that's atypical of the rest of the week.

SO, the super simple tip for managing hundreds of anxiety-inducing emails in your inbox?

First, don't expect that you're going to clear them all out. Set a time limit and stick to that. Once your buzzer goes off, it's time to pull your head out and move on to other things.

Second, I'm scanning my inbox for edges. I'm looking for stuff that looks REALLY important or REALLY unimportant. Trying the tell the difference between two shades of gray is too hard. Do that next, once you have your time box set.

If it's important, I'll open it and either respond immediately (if it's going to take 2 minutes or less) or create a to-do for later in the day. If it's unimportant, I'll check the box next to it and either mark it spam and unsubscribe or mark it read and archive it.

Even with 100 emails in my inbox, this usually removes at least 50% - 80% of them.

Okay, recap:
1. Set your expectations and know that you might not get to inbox 0 right this second.
2. Scan for the "edges," anything that's super important or super unimportant.
3. Clear away the noise by marking read/archive or create to-dos for important things that take more than 2 minutes.

That's it.

This alone will keep your sanity level in check.

Do this for 30 minutes every morning and 30 minutes near the end of your day and you will be an email master.

Happy Monday. Have a great week.