The theory of a zero inbox (briefly this says that you need to process your email and get it the hell out of your inbox to a system somewhere else - resulting in a strong mental boost to see it at zero) can go by the wayside for good after a break of a week or two.
The cumulative backlog may need some more brutal hacking through to regain control - otherwise it will suck the will to live from you!
A great post on this was done by Gina Trapani in her Work Smart series. You can see the full post here - it is entitled How to Power Through a Mountain of Email and the key messages are:
- You may well need to work in bulk - imposing straightforward deletions based on criteria like sender or lenght of time since received.
- Give yourself permission for short responses - clearing your decks in a much more concise way than normal.
The sooner you do this the sooner you will regain control and lessen your stress. Check out the full post.
keith
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