IT Blog

The concept of inbox zero sounds great—until you realize that most of the methods require a fair amount of setup work, a bunch of manual sorting, and the iron-willed determination to actually follow up with people who expect a response from you.

I, for one, identify wholeheartedly with the lazy man from that one quote that I’m too lazy to type out here. (I always thought the quote came from Bill Gates, but apparently there’s some lively discussion surrounding the true source. I’d research it, but . . . you know . . . lazy.)

Lazy though I may be, I somehow keep a very clean inbox. And I don’t put much work into it, although my method has certainly evolved over the years. It started relatively simple, then got a little more complicated, and finally settled on what I use today, which involves a bit of up-front setup and initial refinement but very little work after that.

I’ll explain this assuming you’re using Outlook or Gmail, but the basic blocking and tackling remain the…