Getting to inbox zero every day is more than just a simple email management task; it has several psychological benefits that can greatly improve your overall well-being and productivity. By reaching inbox zero every day, you can:

1. Maintain motivation: Reaching inbox zero every day can help you maintain your motivation and enthusiasm for email management, making it easier to sustain the habit over time.
2. Reduced Stress: An overflowing inbox can cause stress and anxiety, but having an empty inbox every day can help reduce that stress and allow you to focus on other tasks.
3. Improved Focus: When your inbox is empty, you can focus on the tasks at hand without being distracted by incoming emails.
4. Increased Sense of Control: By processing emails and getting to inbox zero, you are taking control of your inbox and demonstrating mastery over your email communication. This can help you feel more in control and less overwhelmed.
5. Better Time Management: By processing emails daily, you can ensure...

If you are a fan of the methodology espoused by David Allen in his book “Getting Things Done” (GTD), you may find that you will appreciate the approach and functionality of LeanMail (LM). GTD is a system for managing tasks and projects that emphasizes the importance of breaking down large tasks into smaller, actionable steps, and focusing on the most important and urgent tasks first. 

LeanMail is a email management system that is built around similar principles of GTD. It aims to help users prioritize and process their emails according to importance and urgency, using techniques like “touching” an email only once, using labels and filters to organize messages, and setting aside dedicated time to review and respond to messages. By using LeanMail’s software and methodology, you can achieve a higher level of organization and efficiency in your inbox, reducing stress and allowing you to focus on more important tasks. 

Additionally, LeanMail also...

Meta tagging emails, or using labels and tags to categorize and organize messages, can be more effective than filing them away in folders for several reasons:

1. Increased flexibility: Meta tagging allows you to assign multiple labels and tags to a single message, making it easier to find and access relevant information. This is especially useful if you’re searching for a message that pertains to multiple projects or topics.
2. Improved searchability: When you use metatags, you can search for messages using specific keywords or phrases, making it easier to find the information you need. This is much more efficient than manually searching through a series of folders.
3. Greater scalability: As the number of messages in your inbox grows, it can become increasingly difficult to manage and organize them in folders. With meta tagging, you can continue to add new labels and tags as needed, making it easier to scale your organization system as your email volume...

LeanMail is a highly efficient email management method designed to streamline your inbox and increase productivity, regardless of the volume of emails you receive. While many email management systems are geared towards individuals with high email volumes, LeanMail offers numerous benefits even for those who receive only a few emails per day. From reducing clutter to optimizing your workflow, LeanMail's innovative approach to email management will help you maximize your email efficiency and take control of your inbox.

Here are just seven of the most important benefits for those receiving fewer than 20 emails per day.

1. Improved email management skills: The LeanMail method helps to improve email management skills, regardless of the number of emails received.
2. Increased efficiency: It streamlines the email process and reduces the time spent on email, allowing for more time to focus on other tasks.
3. Improved focus and productivity: By prioritizing and processing emails efficiently, you can...

For many, managing an inbox is an agonizing Sisyphean task - or at least unpleasant and inefficient. But really, it's quite simple, and can be enormously efficient if you embrace three important concepts.

Before we get to those concepts, however, let's understand why you might reject the thesis that managing email could be simple. Nearly anyone reading this would immediately react with: Maybe for you, but you have no idea about the complexity and sheer number of emails I receive.  

And I would say, Ah, but after 15 years devoted to understanding email management as seen from those on the front lines of battle, and having worked with thousands of users form every company size and vertical imaginable, I have the qualifications to say, I do understand your situation.

Here's the thing, I agree that your work (decision making) may be complex: i.e. competing priorities and urgencies, intricate dependencies, never mind the strategic ways to request or submit responses is indeed...

If you have ever bought a diamond ring, you probably know about the 4C’s of diamonds: cut, color, clarity, and carats.  

It’s also fine if you don’t. 

Maybe the size of the diamond was the main thing you cared about because, let’s face it, it’s the most obvious characteristic and you’re probably not going to carry around the certificate to show people the other more subtle values. Perhaps, however, you will place equal value on all four of the C’s because you want more sparkle in your diamond. All these subtle elements are measurable – even though they are difficult to see using the naked eye.  As a matter of fact, they are difficult if not impossible to see for professionals even when they are using a loop. This is why diamond sellers depend on certification. 

Unlike diamonds, productivity tools don’t come with a certificate; but wouldn’t it be great if they did! Imagine: ...

Outlook is a tool; the Gmail platform is a tool.  Email is a medium. 

Many people refer to email as a tool, but it's not.  It's a medium just as books, CD’s, and letters are media.  You may not like managing email but that has less to do with the media itself and more to do with the process of managing it using current tools.  

Why it’s important 

Distinguishing the technology from the media is critical because by designating email as a tool we camouflage the problem connected with managing email, namely the outdated methods and technologies involved in handling the email medium.  In of itself, email simply provides us with the possibility to send, receive and archive messages, pictures, hyperlinks and attachments such as documents.  There is nothing inherently bad with that.  So, how did email get confused with being a technology, and why do even smart people, like Tim Denning, mock it and treat it with disdain?...

Remember those days of back-to-back hour-long meetings?

Well, they’re gone, and they won't be coming back— I mean ever.

I’m not saying that we won’t have an occasional 60-minute meeting, but videoconferencing is changing more than where we meet; it’s also changing for how long we meet.

I hate to say, “I told you so” (Ok, I LOVE to say “I told you so”), but I’ve noticed that more and more people are adopting the 15, 25 and 50-minute meeting approach. (Those sacrificed 5 and 10 minutes? They’re for getting things in order before the next meeting. Novel idea, right?)

When you said, “let’s meet”, ten years ago, it meant an hour. Maybe even longer if someone was flying in for the meeting. (Wow, remember flying in for a meeting!?)

Today, we need to be more precise about timings – and there had better be an agenda. No agenda, no meeting.

We no longer take 60-minute meetings with strangers - people we...

Do you receive a lot of non-core business email that you don’t consider spam? Email that falls into the gray space of not very important, but you want to keep anyway. Then Inbox480 is for you. It’s similar to Focus, but also quite different in that it gives you a lot more control over which emails are filtered, it doesn’t share the content of your emails with Microsoft, and it also cleans up after itself, so you don’t need to do regular purges. Check it out here.

Here is a link to find out more about LeanMail and to register for our Free LeanMail introductory workshop.

Michael Hoffman

One thing is certain these days, and that is: nothing is certain.

Yes. I apologize for the cliché, but this is how most of are feeling, so why not be out with it?

With all the amazing technology we have for peering into the future, times are more perilous than ever. The inclination we all feel when the world is spinning too fast is to jump off in order to attempt to regain our balance.

Anything else would be counterintuitive.

And yet, just as our parents didn't lock us away in a closet when our mischief arose beyond their boiling points (one hopes!), we too must keep calm and not re-act.

I hyphenate re-act to put emphasis on the prefix "re" to point out that a re-action has very little choice involved. One action precipitates another without much consternation.

Let's face it, the first thing we think of when sales are down is cutting costs. I don't know how many times I've heard leaders repeat the phrase: We're cutting out everything that is not essential for the rest of...