If my inbox gets out of control, my mind does too!

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I do not know how people manage their email, but for a long time it felt like the devil itself had invented it. It felt like a source of distraction, time waste, and stress. Seeing all those messages piling up, thinking of the person behind them waiting for a response, and getting them at any time was driving me crazy.

And there was the guilt. The guilt of not responding to them or if I responded to them, then the guilt of not doing something that was "more important". At times it felt that either I replied to emails or I did research, there was not enough time to do both. With emails sometimes I was frozen in the process of decision-making, "what do I do with this email?" And they would stay in my inbox and I would keep reading the subject line, again and again, every time I opened the inbox anew. What a waste of time and energy. It also hindered my capacity to take action.

The solution for me came with an 'empty inbox' policy. The only thing that gives me peace of mind is to have an empty inbox. The only way I manage to do this is by getting rid of emails as quick as possible by either (1) erase if irrelevant, (2) store if relevant and does not require answer, (3) reply to them immediately, if possible, (4) if I need to take some action, either I put a task or a book a slot on my Google calendar - a task is better because it is a checkbox and it is half an hour by default - and then I put a reminder on the email on a given date and I store it in an appropriate folder. 

Then the inbox is empty, I know what I have to do and I can move on to other stuff.

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