I track a series of habits on a daily basis. I do this to bring balance to my life and nudge myself towards the ideal version of me. I’ll write more about why I do this and the tools I built in the future.
One of the habits I track is whether I achieved Inbox Zero. Simply put, “At any point in the day, did I successfully clear my inbox?” It doesn’t mean that I maintained Inbox Zero all day long. It counts, even if it lasted for a few minutes.
This is not an article about why you should practice Inbox Zero. There are plenty on Medium for that. I practice it so that I can better manage my time.
Before Inbox Zero, my inboxes served as To-Do lists. New emails would sit within a plethora of tasks I wanted to put off until later. I could easily miss something important because of all the clutter.
This post is a reminder that my inbox is a prioritization queue. It’s easy to fall into the old habit of a To-Do list. Modern email clients provide enough tools to make this simple.