Get to Inbox Zero - For Freelancers and others with Many Jobs

Check Emails with a Mindset to Add to To Do List

Versus Blindly Responding

Every day we wake up to emails, some more than others but whether it is 10 or 100 they still sit there. They sit there weighing on your mind and poking at your anxiety every time you open up your laptop, or pick up your phone. I have seen co-workers’ emails with 1000s of unread emails or even if read they are unorganized and are…just there. There can not be any way you are keeping a mental note on each email that is in your inbox if your inbox looks like this. Emails if we think of it are a to-do list from others that we must get to “or else” (especially for those in corporate jobs with micromanagers). We must change the mindset around this tool that we use for communication to be just that, a tool to get things done and to run our personal lives and our businesses to its fullest. So since email is truly this to-do list then let us treat it that way…it is time to give in, right? Change your mindset to this email thing…do not give this tool the power it does not deserve. Line them up, organize them, set priorities, and get them out of your way. Keep on reading for specific workflows on how I keep all of my inboxes – Inbox Zero – I mean this is how I do it and it works for me to remove this stress from my day-to-day.

Add to To Do List Then Get it Out of That Box

In my mornings, after my workout (mentioning this as you all need to go and get healthy), getting ready for the day, etc, so around 7:45 am – 8 am, I open up my inboxes. I have 4 inboxes I am responsible for and I treat them the same. I open them up one by one and I open up my ToDoist app and start loading it up with the To-Do list items or situations people put in front of me. Then once it is in my ToDoist app I archive that email using filters I use so they can be found later. Then I sit with the ToDoist app and organize what I believe should be done first given the priorities I set for those tasks.

Google – Read this for my Google Workflow

If you are using Gmail the way you organize your emails is by placing labels on them. Each label will create a label category that can be found by going to the left side of the Gmail email client to find those messages. This is where your email should be using the method I explained above, and not in your inbox. In action, when you are going through your to-do list you will get up to that item and you’ll know that you will have to go to that label category and retrieve the message in order to treat that to-do item. At first, you might have to write into the to-do list description on which label was used but after a while, you will know what goes where so retrieval will speed up as you use this system of work.

Outlook – Read this for my Outlook Workflow

If you are using Outlook the way you organize your emails is by placing categories onto them and then you would sort them into a folder. Each category will be its own category and each folder will be its own folder. All of the folders can be found by going to the left side of the Outlook email client to find those messages. The method I use on this all depends on what the message is. An example of the more involved emails would be how I organize our vendor emails. When these emails come in I tag these emails with the category of the product that it is and then move them into the “Dealer” folder. For other emails that involve our vendors in addition to our internal company operations, a perfect example would be topics that involve our quality department. With this example of an email of this type I would then set 2 different categories and then move it to the same “Dealer” folder. This is where your email should be using the method I explained above, and not in your inbox. In action, when you are going through your to-do list you will get up to that item and you’ll know that you will have to go to that category/folder and retrieve the message in order to treat that to-do item. At first, you might have to write into the to-do list description on which category/folder was used but after a while, you will know what goes where so retrieval will speed up as you use this system of work.

My Go-To To-Do List App – ToDoist –

Free Version

There are many digital to-do lists out there and I have tried most of them. All of them have a place in this world but for someone who needs a general to-do list with ways to organize different parts of their lives I highly recommend the ToDoist app. This is the app I use and why I keep it to the free version. The free version allows you to use three free categories which are set up or activated with a “#” so I have #personal, #cga, and then one more for the other job I keep and we’ll call #otherhustle. Then there is an option I have, and I believe it is a default within Todoist, the #work category. I use the #work exclusively for task sharing with a selected few people on my team which in my opinion and just in my use case is a good way to avoid going to the paid subscription. As a note: I don’t use this heavily as a team app, I primarily use this just for myself. When it comes to the priorities on the app I use P3 for most things reserving P2 and P1 for things that come up during the day that becomes very urgent. Most of the time I find myself making a normal P3-level to-do list item and changing the urgency as it becomes a fire to put out. I mainly use the priorities as a way to organize where it shows up on my Today list which is what I work out of. Within ToDoist once you make the category, for me it would be #cga I also have that “folder” of sorts so I could go into that category and see all of my to-do items I put into that category via the tag of #cga. A huge plus with ToDoist is if I know I am unable to get to something I can schedule it to show up on another day. So for general things, I can just push them off to another day or later in the week but if I am working on a project with someone I will always ask them the next time we will follow up with them and I’ll set up the date to the day before so I can prep for the project and keep it moving. Other projects that I am working on as an individual so for example, when I work on US work visas or I work with a consulting client of ours I make a reoccurring task. In ToDoist you can type in “every wed” and that will bring that item up every Wednesday. Especially with consulting, with consulting I could just sit there and give 4 hours on a given project but the price I negotiated would turn up being too low so I only work on those tasks once a week for only 30 – 45 min so I can remain profitable with it so it doesn’t get in the way with other work I need to do. As freelancers this is important to remember, your time is valuable, and figuring out what your hourly rate is and scheduling your time accordingly is very important to keep in mind to ensure everything you do is indeed profitable. To keep you on track, a solid timer I use is the app “Focus Keeper” – I recommend it.

I Do Respond to Emails Straight Away at Times

Before I stated that I would move all emails into labels/categories/folders and into my to-do list and then treat it once I get up to it into my to-do list. This isn’t always the case of course. If an email comes in and I can knock it out in 30 sec or even 2 min I might handle it and just label it and achieve it and it won’t even make the list. The point of this is that you don’t have to be so crazy about all of this. At the end of the day, we just want to work to get to Inbox Zero so our inbox and our mind are blank which allows us to do real work in our day.

Working Your List: First in First Out

My workflow when using my to-do list is the following. After I put everything in there from my inbox and it is in my Todoist app I sit with it and move items around and set the needed “true” priorities as I actually sit with it. Then it then becomes a top to bottom work process, that again is not perfect. As I work through the list and I see the next item will take 2 hrs and if I treated that 2 hr item it would bump the next item to the next day. So decisions have to be made in your day, we have to pivot, and due to that, I would knock out the item or two after that to get it off the list so I can take the time on that 2 hr item that was further up my list. Things come up in the day so you have to keep it all flexible but again the morning organization is an amazing process to set up your day. The whole meaning of this process, to be real, is just to keep the flow moving along. On the days you are unorganized and not knowing what to do next and you are blindly going through your day just answering every email that comes in you end up working on other people’s schedules and knocking out others’ to-do lists – don’t be that guy/gal.