the big inbox dump

The Big Inbox Dump, or How Unclutterer Saved My Life!

A while ago, I watched Merlin Mann's "Inbox Zero" presentation at work - watch the video. It sounded so great, but I just couldn't find enough info in his articles on HOW to actually get there. I had not hundreds, but thousands of emails in my work Inbox! We're not talking about *gasp!* months of emails, we're talking two years of emails!!!  And I'm here to tell you; this truly is one of those things that only gets worse if you put it off.

Seeing as how I had 13,758 messages in my Inbox, over 6,000 of those unread, it was time to do something. (That doesn't even include the thousands of others that I automatically filter out into other folders to "read later" - mailing lists like "for sale" or "miscellaneous".)

Do you have any idea the kind of stress that puts on a person??? The psychological weight, the helplessness, the constant feeling of being overwhelmed?

Yesterday, I'd finally had enough. I vaguely recalled an article that had a method I thought I could at least start with, I just didn't have time for it at the time. I tracked the article down on Unclutterer: Simple strategies to clear email clutter — From Gina Trapani of Lifehacker.

The key to this for me is the very first point: The Big Inbox Dump. You make a new folder/label called "Backlog", select the entire Inbox, and put it in there. Then you go back in and pull out the important emails from the last day or so that need action and put them back in the Inbox. From there, you have to go back and work through the backlog, archiving and deleting ruthlessly. I'm staying on top of keeping an empty Inbox, but I do have a gazillion folders/labels, which they don't recommend. One thing at a time.

Right now, I'm just reveling in my Inbox; 3 action items, 0 unread.