A peek into the mind of a sleep deprived software developer, husband, dad and gamer.

One-Touch to Inbox Zero: How I Spend 17 Minutes Per Day on Email | Tiago Forte

A great read on applying the Inbox Zero approach to tackling emails.

It is a pretty long read, but I think it's worth your time. Especially if you have overflowing email inboxes like me. If you find yourself doubting whether it's worth your time, I suggest scrolling all the way down to the “Fifth, practice making triage decisions” section. In there you will see how everything comes together. It will give you a good idea of whether this approach will actually work for you or not.

Link: One-Touch to Inbox Zero: How I Spend 17 Minutes Per Day on Email

In this post, I share some of the notes I wrote down from when I read it. To an extent, you can think of these notes as literature notes.


Use an app that allows you to forward/send emails to it. This allows you to clear the email off your inbox, while still keeping it in a place where it can be read at a later time.

In the guide, the author mentions using EverNote for this. I found that you can do the same thing with OneNote.


One thing I don't do, but is mentioned in the guide, is to always start with the oldest email. I always start with the newest one... Hmmm, maybe that's why I can never clear out the older emails I have in my inbox?


Another idea I ran into, that I should probably apply to my note-taking workflow, is to funnel everything into one inbox.

Right now, the notes I take when I'm not at home, are either saved on OneNote on my phone, or on an Obsidian vault on a different PC/laptop. I need to consolidate and use just one app for all these notes away from home.

In that case, writing down notes on OneNote via web browser on different PCs/laptops and on my phone seems to be the best option right now.

Tags: #Bookmarks #Productivity #NoteTaking #TiagoForte

Discuss... or leave me a comment below.