An Overwhelming Inbox

An illustration of a laptop with a screen full of envelopes showcasing 998 unread email messages.

Like most people, I struggle with email. I have it generally under control, but once in a while, when things get difficult, I fall behind, and my inbox gets out of control.

Once this happens and the number of emails I need to deal with goes over a hundred, I get overwhelmed and start dreading my inbox. And from there, things quickly spiral out of control.

But I think I found an effective way to deal with it permanently.

A simple framework for effectively dealing with email:

  1. Process your inbox. Go through all messages as quickly as possible and read/delete/archive those you don’t need to act upon.
  2. Deal with the rest one bit at a time.

The second part is tricky, as most of these messages require more time, energy, and effort if you want to properly deal with them.

The good news is that you don’t have to handle all of the messages at once. If you can tackle just a few every day, you’ll eventually get to the bottom of it.

If you can continuously, persistently repeat these steps, your inbox should be almost always under control.

PS. I appreciate your patience if you’re waiting for my reply. It shouldn’t take long now.