Open question: What's the point of inbox zero?

I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum of the author-I don't understand those who don't practice inbox zero. My personal view is that if a certain volume of mail starts to become overwhelming, or if I can easily leave it and not suffer any bad effects, I should unsubscribe. I don't act on every single email I get in, and if I'm going to put it off for now but know I need to remember to do it, I will read it and then 'star' it. Occasionally, I will mark the top email as unread because I know I will see it again that way.

I practice "unread zero". I leave emails in my inbox in case I need them later. The search function works well. If they are not marked "unread", I don't pay attention to them thus my brain does not see it as clutter.

My inbox (work - personal is full of 'like to read one day stuff') represents how cluttered my mind is. If it's above 30 messages, then I'm not in control of work. I don't aim for zero on a regular basis, but like it to be below 10.<p>Currently at 82 items ... and I'm dual procrastinating on HN and BBC iPlayer. Hmmm...

The point of inbox zero is a feeling of getting things done and getting positive reinforcement form it, as well as an information organizing method: what's in your inbox is (part of) your ToDo list. Like joshklein I do not bother with moving messages out of inbox - for me they are just a stream. However I mark with a star (in gmail), flag (in Outlook) or mark as unread all the messages that require follow-up action I did not do immediately. And sometimes I do a wholesale archiving, and only in short moments after that my inbox is zero or near that.

It all depends on your mental model. I, for instance, don't archive my messages; once they are marked as read in the inbox, I'm done with them. The point of inbox zero is, I believe, just to separate the place you organize your overall actions from the place you find out about new actions. When you combine the two, as a busy person, you just hold too much information in your head that could easily be taken care of by a system you can abide by.

When I started doing inbox zero, I actually spent much, much less time on email. An email you leave in your inbox costs you mental energy every time you see it. An email you deal with immediately costs you only once.<p>Also learning to use the gmail shortcuts J, K, &#60;enter&#62;, X, Y (or E), C, shift-I, *-A, and G-I was very helpful. You can type ? from the gmail home screen to see the shortcuts. Try it out!

1. Its not that hard to get to zero if you know the keyboard shortcuts to Gmail: use 'J' and 'K' to move between messages and 'Y' to archive. If you're in list view, 'X' highlights the message so 'XY' will archive things very very quickly.<p>2. Liberal use of autoarchive for high volume mailing lists that I don't need to be continuously updated on. I'll clear those folders out every once in a while.<p>3. Boomerang is a great tool that lets you temporarily archive a message. It will come back to the Inbox when you tell it to, so you can put stuff you don't have to act on for a while away and stay near zero with it:<p><a href="http://www.boomeranggmail.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.boomeranggmail.com/</a><p>(I am not affiliated with Boomerang.)

Apart from some mailing list, which bypasses the inbox, I always want to get unread messages read. If it's junk I'll delete, if it's something I need to action later, I'll star it (gmail). I just don't want to see "Unread messages"..

I try to keep my main (work) inbox down to zero unread messages or as close to as possible. It has anything that's important, that I need to reply to with some urgency. All of the cruft (mailing lists, people I don't explicitly deal with regularly, people I've never received messages from before) goes elsewhere.<p>I only check email several times a day, at the start of the day I prioritise and schedule tasks based on emails, then later on I respond in batch, then check again in the afternoon and respond in batch before going home. It frustrates some people, but given that I actually get stuff done, the alternative is far worse.

My inbox is every email conversation that isn't archived. It is a list of items awaiting action from me. (Just because an email has been read doesn't mean it doesn't require action from me.) If it no longer requires action from me, then I archive it. Thus the inbox is a portion of my global "to do" list and represents, in a very real way, the amount of Stuff that I need to worry about at any given time.<p>I had no idea that "do all of the Stuff that you need to do" had such a fancy name, or was worth writing a book around.<p>Aiming for zero is fine. Expecting to achieve it is impractical, of course. We all have Stuff to do.

Email for me is something to be processed. If it doesn't <i>need</i> my attention and response, I try to filter it so it doesn't reach my inbox.<p>In contrast, my facebook stream is a diverse collection of stuff from people I care about that may interest me and which I peruse every once in a while. HN is kind of in the same category, except that HN content tends to be longer and more impersonal.

People are different.<p>Is that really so hard to fathom? You may not get IB0, you may not be capable of "getting" IB0. It's ok.

A couple points...<p>- An inbox zero usually loads faster<p>- An empty inbox allows to concentrate on real work items rather than searching reading material in the inbox<p>- It's the electronic equivalent of a clean desk. It makes a clean impression when other people look on it.<p>- It's needed when you use your inbox as a todo list.

For those of you in favor of a zero inbox, I have a couple of follow-up questions.<p>(1) are you archiving? (2) if not, how do you search for old emails?

Privacy. Data protection. Why store data on the Internet that you don't need to?

The answer is pretty obvious to me. If I have 0 unread messages, when I login into my client I know I don't have any new messages without having to actually look at the message list.

My inbox represents things I need to get done. If it's an email from a Prof, it's a project I need to start and get checkmark-scheduled on my calendar. If it's from a (potential) employer, it stays until I finish the next step in the interview process. I just recently finished up some long lasted loose ends that I'm very happy to have been done with. I just recently got back to 0 unread, and only 4 are still requiring enough attention to continuing living in my Inbox.