How To Very Quickly Clear Your Email

A lot of email got you feeling down? I know the feeling. After spending a bunch of time playing around analyzing the root causes of why an inbox gets backed up, and using a few different techniques and tools, I've got a pretty rock-solid way to get your inbox to zero fast. It'll absolutely work for you if you do it.

Recommended Materials:

*Laptop*Comfortable spot without internet access*Offline email: Mac Mail, Thunderbird, Outlook, the Offline Gmail Chrome Plugin, or something similar*Scrap paper and a pen*An elegant note-taking program. I recommend Evernote.*A calendar

If you're an "online email only" kind of guy or gal, I'd recommend you set up IMAP so you've got all your email on your computer. Empirically speaking, internet access is distracting and leads down rabbit holes. The success rate of successfully clearing out the inbox goes down if you're online, and the time it takes to do so at least doubles. If you're a Gmail user, you're in luck -- Offline Gmail for Chrome is quite robust and you won't need to set anything up. I still like using Outlook or OSX's native Mail App better than Offline Gmail, but it's fast to set up.

Understanding the Email Problem

Prioritize: Work Smarter, Not Harder

Hard work produces near magical results, but we all have an absolute ceiling on how hard we work.

People usually start thinking about working smarter once they're near that limit and getting burned out. Once the realization sets in that you can't work any harder, you've got to get smarter.

To work smart, the first thing you need to do is figure out what you're already doing.