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How to Get Your Email Inbox to Zero Every Day (Updated)

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In 2008 Matt Perman wrote a popular post called “How to Get Your Email Inbox to Zero Every Day.” Nearing 8 years old and originally clocking in at 5,700 words, this material was due for an update.

Here’s the updated article, now in an easier to read PDF format.

Whether you’ve actively refined your email system for years or you’ve never thought much about it, this crash-course article covers the essential principles for managing email more effectively. Topics include setting up your email workspace, rules for processing email, best practices for archiving, and more.

Apply these principles consistently and you’ll multiply the time you have for doing other good work.

Download “How to Get Your Inbox to Zero Every Day.”

What Productivity Can’t Do

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We tend to seek out better productivity practices as a way of reducing our own stress and increasing our sense of personal satisfaction. We can assume that if we have the right tools, work ethic, and know-how, we can solve most of our problems. We subconsciously think that productivity itself will bring us inner peace and joy.

But in itself it’s not enough.

It’s a good thing to want to reduce our own stress and increase our satisfaction in our work. The problem is that those goals are insufficient. Our true purpose in improving our productivity should be to serve others. And, amazingly, this is the path to our deepest joy.

Here’s what Jonathan Edwards had to say on this (in Charity and Its Fruits):

If you are selfish, and make yourself and your own private interests your idol, God will leave you to yourself, and let you promote your own interests as well as you can.

But if you do not selfishly seek your own, but do seek the things that are Jesus Christ’s, and the things of your fellow human beings, then God will make your interest and happiness his own charge, and he is infinitely more able to provide for and promote it than you are. The resources of the universe move at his bidding, and he can easily command them all to subserve your welfare.

So not to seek your own, in the selfish sense, is the best way of seeking your own in a better sense. It is the directest course you can take to secure your highest happiness.

We Are All in Little League

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This week I started coaching little league baseball for the first time. My two boys are on the same team and we’re pretty excited around here.

But going into our first practice, I knew I better temper my expectations. Typical seven, eight, and nine-year-olds have hardly been on a baseball field, much less developed the fundamentals of playing the game. Hand-eye coordination is spotty and attention spans are short (we’re talking five minutes short at our first practice).

All baseball players at this age have major holes in their game. They might have 17 things wrong with their swing alone! But kids can’t fix 17 things at one time. So my plan is to focus on one or two things with each player. If I’m able to help them reduce 17 down to 15 by the end of the season, that’s progress. And then next year their coach can help them get down to 12 or 13.

If we’re honest, we are all in little league.

We are imperfect people with real limitations and real-world constraints, and the way we lead change or grow in any area is essentially the same way kids get better at hitting baseballs.

If we try to change everything at once, should we really expect to make meaningful progress?

We Don’t Have a Right to Be Idle

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No man has a right to be idle . . . where is it in such a world as this that health, and leisure, and affluence may not find some ignorance to instruct, some wrong to redress, some want to supply, some misery to alleviate?  – William Wilberforce

It makes no sense for us to live in a society of abundance while half the world lives in great need, and not be diligent and creative and eager to figure out ways to use our abundance to help meet those needs.

When we look around and see our comfort, privilege, and affluence, we shouldn’t fall into the trap of asking “how can I get more of this?” As Kingdom-minded Christians, our first thought should be: “how can I use this technology/money/time to serve—especially those in greatest need?”

That’s the gospel-driven productivity William Wilberforce gave his life to.

Does God Care About Efficiency?

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Much (but not all!) productivity literature places way too much focus on efficiency. The default thinking of many seems to be that one of our main goals in any task should be to get it done as quickly as possible with as little waste as possible.

This works well with machines. But it is problematic when it comes to people, because prioritizing efficiency when humans are involved often results in diminishing beauty, quality, and discovery. (For one example, see Patrick Lencioni’s great article “The Enemy of Innovation and Creativity” which is, you guessed it, efficiency.) Efficiency has its place, but it is secondary to effectiveness and quality.

This productivity principle relates to apologetics, or the defense of the faith. Sometimes skeptics look at the universe and the way God created things and critique it on the basis that it’s not maximally efficient.

These thinkers are guilty of over-prioritizing efficiency. For God is far more like an artist than an engineer.

I love how William Lane Craig puts this at his site Reasonable Faith, in response to the question “Does the Vastness of the Universe Support Naturalism?“:

Sometimes people complain that a vast cosmos is a waste of space and so would impugn God’s efficiency as a Creator and Designer. But here I’m persuaded by Thomas Morris’ point that efficiency is a value only for someone who has limited time and/or resources, a condition which is just inapplicable to God.

That’s why I think that those pressing the efficiency objection are just wrong in thinking of God in terms of an engineer marshaling his resources rather than as an artist, who enjoys splashing His cosmic canvas with dazzling colors and creations.

I am in awe as I look at the galactic and cosmic structures photographed by the Hubble telescope. The vastness and beauty of the universe speak to me of God’s majestic greatness and His marvelous condescension in loving and caring about us.

As with God, so also with us. Care about efficiency. But care about beauty and service most of all.

 

Productivity Tip: Start with Simple

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Here’s a project for you: go build a smart phone this weekend.

I’ll give you some parts and some tools. You can pull from the internet if you want. And we’ll help you keep the distractions away. How do you think your project will turn out?

If you’re like most people, it’s going to be an unmitigated disaster. Why?  Because it’s virtually impossible to build a complex system from scratch.

Productivity Complexity

If you’re new to thinking about productivity and personal effectiveness, you may be surprised by how complex the whole subject can be.

There’s the theology piece. There’s the motivation piece. There’s weekly planning and workflow management and a hundred digital tools that might help you. You have different roles, specific strengths, and personal passions…

Then, as soon as you make some progress fitting the pieces together for you, you realize that you better figure out how your personal system fits (or doesn’t fit) with your colleagues. It doesn’t matter how “effective” your system is if you can’t work with others to be truly productive.

All this complexity can keep you from getting started.

The good news is you don’t have to jump in to the deep end of the productivity pool.

Start with Simple

Today’s tip is simply to “start with simple.”

This comes from Gall’s Law, named after John Gall, a systems theorist who wrote the book Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail. It goes like this:

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: a complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a simple system.

So, permission granted to start simple.

Simplicity is incredibly powerful in how it allows you to get started and in what it makes possible down the line.

A Few Simple Places to Start

Productivity Tip: Remember the Intangibles (and go to conferences)

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Remember the Intangibles

The tendency to focus only on immediate, directly measurable results is a common productivity fallacy for individuals and organizations.

Way back in 1982 Tom Peters and Robert Waterman termed this “the numerative bias,” and gave example after example of how a narrow concern for numbers leads managers and leaders to overlook the things that really make their products and services shine—and thus leads them to do things to “cut costs” and increase the bottom line that actually end up undermining their results in the long-term. 

This is the great irony: defining productivity mainly in terms of immediate measurable results actually undermines the measurable results in the long-run.

The time and energy and resources you invest in the intangibles is not lost; it is not a “cost of doing business.” It’s an investment that pays substantial returns in the long run. It’s just that you can’t always draw a direct and immediate line to the results. But the results are there, and the connection is there, just as the farmer who sows a crop in the spring sees results—not immediately, but in the fall, when it’s time to harvest.

We too need to have this longterm view when it comes to our effectiveness and productivity, both as individuals and as organizations.

Attending Conferences

One example here for the knowledge worker is attending conferences or industry events. I believe that all knowledge workers should go to every conference they can because these are prime opportunities to connect with people, benefit from excellent teachers, and share ideas—essential to knowledge work. But many think that going to a conference is a luxury or bonus, something to do only if you can get your other, “real” work done.

But nothing could be further from the truth. Going to conferences is a key part of the work of any leader and manager. It is one of the many intangibles at the heart of knowledge work in our day.

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Adapted from What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done. See also Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s In Search of Excellence, especially chapter 6, “Close to the Customer,” where they note that high performing companies are “mainly oriented toward the value, rather than the cost, side of the profitability equation,” and chapter 2, “The Rational Model.” See also my article, Against Over-professionalism in Management: Managing for the Human Side

Hope for Those Who Feel Totally Unproductive

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Job loss, economic downturns, illness, accidents, and a host of other difficult circumstances mean that at some point most of us will face something beyond a typical productivity challenge. We will have times when we’ll be seemingly unable to get much done at all that feels “productive.”

If you’re in a situation like that, take hope in the truth that you can be faithful wherever you are, however meager your energy and resources seem to be.

The book of Revelation, for example, teaches that faithfulness is the means by which we overcome the world and obtain victory. Christ specifically emphasizes this in his letters to the churches in chapters 2 and 3 in relation to those who are powerless and seemingly unable to do anything:

  • “I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich).” – Revelation 2:9
  • “I know you that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.” – Revelation 3:8

You can be poor in this world, and yet utterly rich before Christ (Revelation 2:9). You can be utterly powerless in this world, and yet highly regarded by Christ (Revelation 3:8). This is true riches.

Trusting in him and obeying his commands is the essence of what God requires, and you can do this wherever you are and in whatever condition you are in.

No matter what your situation, you can look to God (Psalm 18:6), you can pray for the spread of the gospel among all nations (Matthew 6:9-10), you can be kind to the people who cross your path (1 Corinthians 13:5), and you can point them to your hope in Christ (1 Peter 3:15). “Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God” (Isaiah 50:10).

And, no matter what situation you’re in, you can pray. You can do more through prayer than you can imagine. “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think…to him be glory” (Ephesians 3:20-21).

If you can pray, you can change the world.