Unsubscribe from every newsletter, notification list, and broadcast list that isn’t absolutely essential (using a service like Unroll.me if necessary)
Forward all your email accounts to Gmail, or whatever service you have to use for work.
Use Mailstrom to batch delete hundreds (or thousands) of unimportant emails at a time, and then move all remaining emails from your inbox to a specially marked folder.
When you’re able to One-Touch emails at a rate of one every few seconds, having multiple inboxes only multiplies the effort. It’s weird — once your email workflow gains economies of scale, you actually benefit from greater volume.
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Turn off all “smart” features
Turn off all chat and social media apps
Email is like a black hole: once it reaches critical mass, it sucks up everything it comes into contact with. You spend so much time in email that all other work activities have to be integrated into it, causing you to spend even more time in email, and so on ad infinitum.
The event horizon expands to the point you start thinking that answering emails is your job. But it’s not — it’s something you have to get out of the way so that you can do your job.
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Turn off all notifications
Your email inbox is someone else’s To Do list.
The key is to set up a workflow that allows for One-Touch — making a decisive decision about what needs to be done about each email, WITHOUT ACTUALLY DOING IT, and then immediately sending each email to an appropriate place where it will be dealt with at the right time.
Archive (“e” shortcut) immediately
This will be probably 60–70% of all messages, as they are basically notifications that just need a quick glance.
Reply (“r”), then archive
You can also optionally create a reminder as in #4 below, in case it falls through the cracks and you need to follow up.
Add to calendar, then archive
You can paste the link to the email in the calendar entry if needed, but this is unnecessary with Google invites, and a quick search will turn up the original email if needed anyway.
Create a task (“add task” shortcut), then archive
Hit the keyboard shortcut for the task manager you’re using, write out the task associated with the message (with a link back to this email generated automatically), and then archive the email.
Note that timely, Very Important Emails get treated the exact same way as any other email, because you’re not in reacting mode, you’re in processing mode.
Send to Reference app, then archive
You can either forward the email (with accompanying attachments) to your Reference app directly, or you can open links in your browser and save the page from there.
Send to Read Later app (“f”), then archive
The easiest way to do this with Instapaper is to right-click any link you find interesting, and then click “Add to Instapaper.” But you can also forward it using only keyboard shortcuts.
These are the rules that govern where “stuff” flows to. Follow these steps until you’ve cleared your inbox.
We can use negative feedback loops to try and restore balance — digital detoxes, work-life balance seminars, meditation retreats, goal-setting and values exercises, New Year’s Resolutions— but none of these will be enough if we keep pouring the fuel of reactivity on the fire of runaway positive feedback loops.
That is our real goal — lowering our reactivity is an end in itself, because anything that forces you to react controls you.
And you will need this new low reactivity superpower, because if you learn to focus your energy instead of dissipating it, and begin offloading the mundane work to tools and habits and systems, and eventually assistants and employees and maybe even someday, intelligent machines, the inevitable result will be that your remaining work will be more intellectually and creatively dense — it will be much, MUCH harder