Work Blog: In Search of Inbox Zero, Part 4: Bulk Handling of Unread Email
Part 4 went up on May 6, 2021. It originally had a screen cap of where to click in Outlook for each of the four main headings. It also had a lot more examples in Section 2, but I cut most of them because they were very specific to my job. There's enough left to get the idea. I also had to update the video link because the original location was taken down.
OK, let's recap. So far on our Inbox journey we've:
- Talked about blocking off time for focused email resolution.
- Given some helpful tactics for resolving emails.
- Discussed ways to prevent future emails.
If you follow these methods diligently, you will eventually reach a point where you routinely read and resolve everything you got in the last day. Some emails have been dealt with, and others have had time scheduled for dedicated focus. Important information has been moved to a more appropriate location than your inbox. That's a great accomplishment! Now, let's talk about the hundreds or thousands of older unread emails you have in your inbox. How do we deal with those?
I suppose that we could wait years for the retention policy to kick in and delete all of your old emails, but in the meantime you'll have to deal with the stress of having all those unread emails in your inbox. It would be nice to get out from under that burden. Wouldn't it be helpful to have some tools for dealing with that email in bulk? Good news, this would be a really short blog post if I didn't have some approaches to share!
I recommend using these tools in the order listed to maximize their impact. All of these tools are effective both when you're coping with a gigantic backlog accumulated over the past many years as well as when you come back to the office after a long absence and have to beat your inbox back under control. If you're afraid to try these tactics out on your Inbox, give it a practice run first on your Deleted Items folder, where the cost of making a mistake is a lot less.
1. Sort By Type
We already talked about sorting by Type when when we discussed dealing with all your meeting invites first. The good news is that when you're looking at hundreds or thousands of old emails, you probably don't need to worry too much about old meeting invitations. I'm not saying you can bulk delete them... but you can probably bulk delete them. And if not, you can at least go through them very quickly and delete them. Other types that are good candidates for mass deletion include:
- Meeting Responses: Accept, Decline, and Tentative
- Automatic Responses like Out of Office messages
- Message Recall Failure/Acceptance
So select Sort by Type and delete everything you can.
2. Sort by From
Some old emails can probably be deleted just based on who they are from. No, I'm not talking about deleting the ones from your manager. Consider the following:
- Zoom - I get emails from Zoom all the time and most of the time they aren't relevant past that meeting.
- "You Have New Messages in Teams" - Yes, this is an actual email sender name, and guess what, you can go find it in Teams if it really matters.
- in Teams - Same as above, but slightly harder to notice.
- REDACTED 3 more work specific examples.
If you've got hundreds or thousands of unread emails, you certainly have some old ones from some sender that you can quickly resolve via mass deletion. For example, in my Deleted email right now I have emails from all of these senders.
- Trello
- Taco From Trello
- REDACTED 8 more examples that are work specific
If I had to mass delete a bunch of old emails from my inbox, these would probably be a good place to start. If I really thought one of these systems was important, these might be good ones to set up an Outlook rule for to put them in a folder for later review.
3. Sort by Subject / Show As Conversation
This starts to get more advanced and a little less useful for mass deletion. Using either the sorting by subject option (which is faster) or turning on Show As Conversation (which is slightly more effective) will give you all the emails in a given chain. Open the most recent email in the chain. Was this resolved without you? Especially if this chain is months old, it's probably a sign that you can delete the entire chain.
4. Sort by Date
Let's be honest. You've got years of unread email in your inbox, and anything that is older than a certain date you can probably just mass delete. That exact date varies based on your role and personal comfort level, but let's assume that anything that was really important from more than 12 months ago got dealt with, because if it wasn't somebody came and asked you about it again and again until you did it. You have my permission to mass delete AT LEAST all the unread email from your inbox (and heck, probably most of the email you actually read) that has had a birthday. And honestly, anything that's at least six months old and unread probably doesn't matter either. Indiana, let it go and move into the future unencumbered by the email of the past.
If you really, really can't let those ancient emails go, at least move them into a folder and mark them as read. If you end up needing them one day (hint: you will not) they are there, but they are no longer clogging up your inbox.
Returning from PTO
At some point you're going to take your sabbatical or some other long vacation or and come back to find a hundreds or thousands of emails waiting for you. Heck, you might get that after only a week off, or if you have particularly bad luck, after a long weekend. The good news is that all of the tools above will work just as well when you come back from PTO. The only difference is that instead of dealing with two years worth of unread email, you'll probably be dealing with a month of email at most. You may need to be a little cautious about mass deletion of emails (Sort By Date is going to be a lot less helpful, for example), but the same general approach will help you cut through those emails and get back to your normal routine as fast as possible.
If worrying about the giant pile of email when you return typically causes you stress on your vacation, before you leave block off a bunch of time the first few days you'll be back in the office to get caught up. Isn't that a great idea? Someone should write a blog post about it.
Inbox Zero is an Ideal
Even if you follow all the tactics I've outlined in this series, you may never reach Inbox Zero, and that is completely ok. Remember, the point is not to literally have zero emails in your inbox at any one time. As the man who coined the term Inbox Zero, Merlin Mann, says It’s about how to reclaim your email, your attention, and your life. That “zero?” It’s not how many messages are in your inbox-it’s how much of your own brain is in that inbox. Especially when you don’t want it to be. That’s it.”
Dealing with all that unread email so you don't feel embarrassed, stressed or guilty about it helps you reclaim your brain.
Not worrying about your email because you have a plan to deal the work it brings you in an efficient manner helps you reclaim your brain.
Knowing that no matter how much email is in your inbox when you come back from PTO you'll be able to cope with it helps you reclaim both your brain and your enjoyment of your vacation.
Reclaim your brain. Try for Inbox Zero.
As always, thanks for reading. If you found this post (or series) useful, let us know via comments or Likes. You can now click "Watch this Page" in the top right-hand corner with full confidence that when you get blog notifications in your inbox you'll be able to deal with them effectively in a timely fashion!
OK, let's recap. So far on our Inbox journey we've:
- Talked about blocking off time for focused email resolution.
- Given some helpful tactics for resolving emails.
- Discussed ways to prevent future emails.
If you follow these methods diligently, you will eventually reach a point where you routinely read and resolve everything you got in the last day. Some emails have been dealt with, and others have had time scheduled for dedicated focus. Important information has been moved to a more appropriate location than your inbox. That's a great accomplishment! Now, let's talk about the hundreds or thousands of older unread emails you have in your inbox. How do we deal with those?
I suppose that we could wait years for the retention policy to kick in and delete all of your old emails, but in the meantime you'll have to deal with the stress of having all those unread emails in your inbox. It would be nice to get out from under that burden. Wouldn't it be helpful to have some tools for dealing with that email in bulk? Good news, this would be a really short blog post if I didn't have some approaches to share!
I recommend using these tools in the order listed to maximize their impact. All of these tools are effective both when you're coping with a gigantic backlog accumulated over the past many years as well as when you come back to the office after a long absence and have to beat your inbox back under control. If you're afraid to try these tactics out on your Inbox, give it a practice run first on your Deleted Items folder, where the cost of making a mistake is a lot less.
1. Sort By Type
We already talked about sorting by Type when when we discussed dealing with all your meeting invites first. The good news is that when you're looking at hundreds or thousands of old emails, you probably don't need to worry too much about old meeting invitations. I'm not saying you can bulk delete them... but you can probably bulk delete them. And if not, you can at least go through them very quickly and delete them. Other types that are good candidates for mass deletion include:
- Meeting Responses: Accept, Decline, and Tentative
- Automatic Responses like Out of Office messages
- Message Recall Failure/Acceptance
So select Sort by Type and delete everything you can.
2. Sort by From
Some old emails can probably be deleted just based on who they are from. No, I'm not talking about deleting the ones from your manager. Consider the following:
- Zoom - I get emails from Zoom all the time and most of the time they aren't relevant past that meeting.
- "You Have New Messages in Teams" - Yes, this is an actual email sender name, and guess what, you can go find it in Teams if it really matters.
- in Teams - Same as above, but slightly harder to notice.
- REDACTED 3 more work specific examples.
If you've got hundreds or thousands of unread emails, you certainly have some old ones from some sender that you can quickly resolve via mass deletion. For example, in my Deleted email right now I have emails from all of these senders.
- Trello
- Taco From Trello
- REDACTED 8 more examples that are work specific
If I had to mass delete a bunch of old emails from my inbox, these would probably be a good place to start. If I really thought one of these systems was important, these might be good ones to set up an Outlook rule for to put them in a folder for later review.
3. Sort by Subject / Show As Conversation
This starts to get more advanced and a little less useful for mass deletion. Using either the sorting by subject option (which is faster) or turning on Show As Conversation (which is slightly more effective) will give you all the emails in a given chain. Open the most recent email in the chain. Was this resolved without you? Especially if this chain is months old, it's probably a sign that you can delete the entire chain.
4. Sort by Date
Let's be honest. You've got years of unread email in your inbox, and anything that is older than a certain date you can probably just mass delete. That exact date varies based on your role and personal comfort level, but let's assume that anything that was really important from more than 12 months ago got dealt with, because if it wasn't somebody came and asked you about it again and again until you did it. You have my permission to mass delete AT LEAST all the unread email from your inbox (and heck, probably most of the email you actually read) that has had a birthday. And honestly, anything that's at least six months old and unread probably doesn't matter either. Indiana, let it go and move into the future unencumbered by the email of the past.
If you really, really can't let those ancient emails go, at least move them into a folder and mark them as read. If you end up needing them one day (hint: you will not) they are there, but they are no longer clogging up your inbox.
Returning from PTO
At some point you're going to take your sabbatical or some other long vacation or and come back to find a hundreds or thousands of emails waiting for you. Heck, you might get that after only a week off, or if you have particularly bad luck, after a long weekend. The good news is that all of the tools above will work just as well when you come back from PTO. The only difference is that instead of dealing with two years worth of unread email, you'll probably be dealing with a month of email at most. You may need to be a little cautious about mass deletion of emails (Sort By Date is going to be a lot less helpful, for example), but the same general approach will help you cut through those emails and get back to your normal routine as fast as possible.
If worrying about the giant pile of email when you return typically causes you stress on your vacation, before you leave block off a bunch of time the first few days you'll be back in the office to get caught up. Isn't that a great idea? Someone should write a blog post about it.
Inbox Zero is an Ideal
Even if you follow all the tactics I've outlined in this series, you may never reach Inbox Zero, and that is completely ok. Remember, the point is not to literally have zero emails in your inbox at any one time. As the man who coined the term Inbox Zero, Merlin Mann, says It’s about how to reclaim your email, your attention, and your life. That “zero?” It’s not how many messages are in your inbox-it’s how much of your own brain is in that inbox. Especially when you don’t want it to be. That’s it.”
Dealing with all that unread email so you don't feel embarrassed, stressed or guilty about it helps you reclaim your brain.
Not worrying about your email because you have a plan to deal the work it brings you in an efficient manner helps you reclaim your brain.
Knowing that no matter how much email is in your inbox when you come back from PTO you'll be able to cope with it helps you reclaim both your brain and your enjoyment of your vacation.
Reclaim your brain. Try for Inbox Zero.
As always, thanks for reading. If you found this post (or series) useful, let us know via comments or Likes. You can now click "Watch this Page" in the top right-hand corner with full confidence that when you get blog notifications in your inbox you'll be able to deal with them effectively in a timely fashion!