Road to inbox zero.
i wrote this guide for a friend who was struggling with a cluttered inbox. it details how i managed to tidy my own inbox more than 10 years ago! this method has two goals: to clear out your inbox and create a structure with automated filters so in the future, your inbox remains tidy and manageable. i decided to copy it over here in case it would be useful to someone else!
step 1: think about a general structure you'd like for the emails you plan to keep
as an example, i have 4 categories:
this is just my way, it's not the only one or the right one - maybe you just need two folders labelled personal and other, it's totally up to you. create the folders you need, keep it simple for now, you'll add to them as you go!
step 2: the actual method
it requires some explanations but I promise it’s not difficult at all!
go to your inbox. look at the first email you see and ask yourself this:
there are 3 outcomes:
A – this address only sends you emails you don’t care about
this is just clutter - this happens a lot with newsletters, mailing lists or marketing emails that you once signed up for and never bothered to unsubscribe. this is the simplest outcome :)
1/ unsubscribe from the list with the link in the email (sometimes your email provider will have a button to do it for you) or block the address if it's not a newsletter. i found that sometimes mailing list and stuff are lying to me and would keep sending me emails, so i tend to block them as well to make extra sure ahah
2/ optional: create a filter to deal with those emails automatically in the future. this is a bit of a nuke option, i've used it to get rid of some rly tenacious mailing lists that send stuff from different email addresses like no-reply@website.com and marketing@website.com and sometimes newsletter@website.com so it's hard to find a single address to block - i'll create a filter that takes all emails finishing in @website.com and will mark as spam, or throw them in the trash directly without passing through my inbox.
3/ use the search bar to search for 'from:email@address' and delete all the results. goodbye forever spam, you will not be missed :')
B - this address sends you some emails that you want to keep, and some that you don't
1/ go to the search bar, and find a search filter that gives you only emails you want to delete or only emails that you want to keep , then apply method A or C accordingly
2/ repeat until you've sorted out all the emails from that sender
3/ optional: set up filter(s) that will do that sorting for you
example: my grandparents send me a lot of chain emails, which i don't keep after reading them - they have big attachments and it fills my storage - but i want to keep the other emails they send me. i noticed that all the emails from chains they send me have 'Fwd:' at the beginning - since they've been forwarded from someone else - so i go in the search bar and write 'Fwd: from:mygrandparents@email' and press enter. the search result gives me only emails from my grandparents' address which contain the keyword 'Fwd:' in them. if i'm worried about some good emails slipping in the results, i'll delete them page by page, scrolling through the email titles to double check. if not, i'll do a select all > trash.
i also set up a filter that tags those emails as ‘chain’ so when I receive a new mail from my grandparents, i know immediately if it’s a chain or not.
C – this address only sends emails you want to keep
1/ make sure you have created the folder you would like to store them in
2/ create a filter - idk about all email providers but when i did it on gmail, i had the option right in the three dots menu in the top right of the email. i don't use gmail anymore but even if other providers have filters in another menu, the principles should stay the same.
of course, if you would rather still sort through those emails manually as they arrive in your inbox, feel free to delete the filter after it's gone through your inbox!
about filters
filters are a bit daunting but they are a powerful tool to do the heavy lifting for you - and keep you from having to do this big clean ever again! if you take the time to set them up now, it gets super easy to stay on top of your inbox.
you can fine tune them too! maybe you receive some mail that you don't even want to read but you need them archived - i've done that with bank statement and bills bc i don't actually read them every month, but i need to keep them for future reference. you can set up the filter for those to mark the email as read and chuck it into the folder you want.
maybe you want all emails that end with the same domain - it's often the case with university addresses, for example, or company ones - to be in a folder together? you can create a filter for that as well!
maybe you want all emails containing a specific keyword to be marked as important? filter. it takes a bit of time to set up, but it saves you so much time down the line so it's very worth it!
you can always edit filters down the line so don't stress out too much about getting it right the first time!
that's basically all there is to it. just keep going down the list and eventually your inbox will be clean. there will be crazy jumps in numbers when you process addresses that are sending you a ton of mail and it feels good to see the number go down...!
if you have thousand and thousands of mail to process, consider setting timers and dedicating a set length of time to it each day and you will succeed eventually. if anything doesn't make sense, feel free to ask me, i'll be happy to help! :>