How I Clear My Emails and Get to Inbox Zero

[@TheKevinShen]

I got to inbox zero on 3 of my email accounts because of your advice here. This is incredible. Holy cow. Thanks Tiago!

[@invictuz4803]

Very inspiration stuff to see how he maintains the discipline to not deal with or respond to emails that he's decided aren't his priority. I feel like that's the only way he can be successful as a very busy man. I need to learn how to say "No" to doing anything and everything.

[@ncrhosigep94]

Like a few of the others, I noted your keyboard shortcuts and made it an action to create the same in my TextExpander. I appreciate you sharing your process and little how-tos like that are the icing on the cake. Thank you.

[@estherinwood3413]

Very interesting thank you for sharing Tiago Forte but how do you deal with the mass of archive emails?

[@K1assh]

This was a nice breakdown. Im surprised there were so few emails over 4 days lol. Doesn't look like you have a system for following up. You sent a task to someone, and archived. Must be nice to send and not worry about outcome :P I gotta keep things in @waiting to ping and prod in the future. (Large company, may moving parts, things get lost in peoples "non" systems)

[@rachelcofield3043]

Do you ever delete emails (instead of archive) and do you ever go through your archived emails?

[@chipcnip]

I had the exact same question. Why would you archive something you never want to see again?

[@votanlean]

Email just takes up a very small storage space. This means you can store all your incoming email without any problem. So why bother spending some more mental energy to make decisions about which email to archive, and which email to delete? Just archive them and forget about them. 10 years later if you want you can search in your archive and delete all emails that have already been there more than 10 years.

[@Od4n]

I do a similar thing when watching content on KZbin, for example this video had 5 interruptions I didn't want to get sucked in so I skipped as soon as possible. No further action for me to take, although I thought it was an interesting take considering the content of this video.

[@TeacherKenEnglish]

Tiago, I'm a university lecturer in Thailand and I like your use of colons. Can you explain more about that? What's your legend of commands? e.g. add: reply: review:...

[@christopherperez6622]

Hey my man @TiagoForte is this still your most relevant method? at least with the basics? Thank you for your time and efforts to share this method/system with everyone.

[@CK-tm7lh]

These are great tips to get my work email under control. When do you find time to sort through those quick captured notes? Do you set a particular time of day to now sort through your quick notes? Also what if you have to reference the email again? Is the note linked to the email?

[@ionutboss1266]

8:50 Trecut prin toate mailurile ca sa vezi ce e cu adevărat cel mai important și să nu fi tras intr-un singur task 12:40 2 mailuri separate cu același task

[@mhpreach]

Now once you sent here and there when do you find time to get back to them.

[@jvluyn]

I love this, but... How do you process from there? In my case, I have to use outlook for work. If I add actionable emails to my to-do list, how do I later retrieve them to perform the action?

[@RafaMedeiros0]

Were you able to think of a solution? For me the scenario is similar.

[@darko.todoroski]

@@RafaMedeiros0 just read getting things done book and you will learn everything. This is old and well know gts process. Nothing new or improved

[@patrickl2096]

Check out the following video on processing your to-do list Inbox - kzbin.info/www/bejne/mZiQY2ymj7p5mdU You can use that as a guideline, no system is perfect for everyone so I recommend to tweak the process along the way to best suit your workflow

[@manonmackey]

I have the same question. If I determine that I need to reply to an email, add it as a task, then archive the email... how do I later reply to the email? I have to go search my archive for the email? Doesn't make much sense. I'm currently using @action and @waiting in Outlook (no choice at work) and add it as a task, but then I find I have to do many steps to review my task list as well as my @action and @waiting all the time. Haven't found a system that works very well - too much friction.

[@DanielHarrisCodes]

@@manonmackey flag the email. Creates a task in outlook which I believe contains the email contents or a link to it even if archived. Tiago would just use the link in his example

[@steveatwater4364]

Are you saying that you only go through your emails once a week during the weekly review?

[@rozowapantera555]

Does this option “quick capture” work also with outlook? So when you create task with the link it will directly take you to the email?

[@legendreoli]

Nope.

[@maggiebowman1636]

Do you have a list of all the newsletters to which you subscribe?

[@ThePitchounette75]

Question: Please Can someone explain why Tiago archives everything? Doesn’t he delete anything that he won’t need to come back to? Thanks!

[@JordanYap35]

@@TiagoForte But what if I don’t have infinite digital storage? I only have 100G for Google Drive.

[@jkoscak]

What app do you suggest for PC instead of Things?

[@TiagoForte]

Todoist

[@kianm2994]

This is great, thanks! Was feverishly looking online for an alternative to Things for over a week!

[@denvermartin9656]

ticktick

[@Your2ndHeart]

Thanks. This is helpful.

[@parheez]

How do you get that red ring around your mouse ? 😃

[@debbiesedgley100]

This was great Tiago, thanks. I use a similar system to clear my emails. It was great to see your personal process and as a refresher when I do get sidetracked! Also to see the extensions and keyboard shortcuts you use. Recently enrolled in your BASB course. Interested to know what you would delete or do you always archive if not needed? For example I noticed rather than delete emails such as "comment from you tube" you archived. For example if it didn't require an action, you read the comment but don't really need it, do you keep this as part of your second brain archive rather than going to you tube directly to read comments at a later date if you were doing some research etc... Hope that makes sense? 😅

[@patrickl2096]

I would delete a lot of emails (especially notifications) where I know I would most likely never check again. Archiving (or email hoarding 😆) too much emails would just build up your email back up size and makes searching your archive email later more cumbersome. I try to be more selective with the data I keep for future reference.

[@debbiesedgley100]

@@patrickl2096 thank you for your reply. Yes I definitely have a preference towards aiming to delete as much as possible. I completed the recent BASB course and being selective about what we keep in our second brain was definitely encouraged and so I think I will continue to delete as much as possible only saving what really resonates with me and what is really necessary. I definitely want to vere away from email hoarding!! 😆 Thanks again!

[@geoffreyagaskins302]

Can’t find in Things the “Quick Capture” extension you mention - and this incredible video/process is useless without it. How do you get that extension?

[@saimingliew]

On a Mac: Preferences > Quick Entry

[@geoffreyagaskins302]

@@saimingliew Thanks for your help!

[@xmeerzx]

so what actually do you do?!

[@viery3654]

It reminds me of Chandler (Friends) :)

[@aleksandrvysokov4391]

And then you...

[@thecryptojedi]

Hey my man @TiagoForte is this still your most relevant method? at least with the basics? Thank you for your time and efforts to share this method/system with everyone.