How to Organize Your Email Inbox and Hit Inbox 0
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ How a cluttered inbox can keep you from living a peacefully productive life
⋒ The different ways I have my email strategically set up to hit “Inbox 0” as much as possible
⋒ Some habits and routines I implemented so I don’t feel overwhelmed by my inbox
Before I share how I have my inbox set up and the habits/routines I have in place to maintain a clutter-free inbox, I want to chat about how having a clutter-free inbox is part of living a peacefully productive life.
I am a big believer that our spaces (so our desks, inside our vehicles, our homes, and yes, even our inboxes) play a role in the state of our minds.
A clutter-free life = a clutter-free mind and vice versa.
I think of clutter as stuff that needs to be managed. When we have too much clutter in our lives, we wind up spending a bulk of our time and energy having to manage the clutter… whether it’s looking for things we need or constantly cleaning up, it gets to be a lot.
As an entrepreneur, I get emails for days. If I didn’t have a system in place, my inbox would be pure chaos and I’d spend at least 1/4 of my work days sifting through emails to find what I was looking for and stressing out about missing something because it fell through the cracks.
Even if you’re not an entrepreneur, I’m willing to bet that you get a good amount of emails and it’s hard to pick out what’s important when there’s so much to sift through.
If we don’t manage our inboxes well, they can become a source of stress which is not the vibe when you’re living a peacefully productive life!
So first I’m gonna share with you how I have my inbox set up. Now obviously this is very specific to my life and my business but I know you love a concrete example so I’m sharing in hopes that it gives you some direction for organizing your own inbox in a way that supports you.
I use the Mail app on my Macbook and iPhone (they sync up) to house all of my emails. I’m sure there are other email platforms but I’ve always used Apple Mail and it works well for me! In my Apple Mail app, I have my 4 email inboxes set up so that I can see each inbox individually and so that I can see my entire inbox as a whole (as in, all the messages from all 4 email addresses in one inbox).
My 4 email addresses each serve a purpose:
01: My “burner email” – this is my old email address that I keep to sign up for discount codes or deals that I don’t want cluttering up my actual email address inboxes. I have this email address synced to the Apple Mail app on my phone, too.
02: An old work email that I created when I started Hustle Sanely that still gets random emails. I don’t have this email address synced to the Apple Mail app on my phone.
03: My personal email – this is what I use to order things, where people who want to talk directly to me send an email, and the email I use to send messages to the Hustle Sanely email list (so any replies to the email go here, too). I have this email address synced to the Apple Mail app on my phone, too.
04: My work email – this is where my OBM forwards anything from the Hustle Sanely customer support inbox that needs attention from me. I don’t have our customer support email linked to my inbox because my OBM handles all of our customer service correspondence. I don’t have this email address synced to the Apple Mail app on my phone.
And then technically there is a 5th email address included in my inbox – my iCloud email but I don’t get emails there. I just don’t want to delete it in case I ever need it, lol.
So those are the email addresses that I have all synced with Apple Mail. Then in my Apple Mail, I have folders. I’m gonna share the names of my folders with you because I know you love a concrete example but like I said, these are very specific to my life and business so keep that in mind:
- Events: This is where I keep appointment reminders
- Hustle Sanely: This folder has a lot of subfolders within it – I won’t name them all because they won’t make sense to you but some examples are Coaching, Courses, BFF Membership, Contractors, Podcast, Photos, Legal – and then some of those have subfolders within them…like under Legal, there is a subfolder called Trademark Info and one called Website Fine Print.
- In progress: This is where I keep things (personal and professional) that are in progress. Some examples of things that are in there right now: an email thread with my lawyer because we are currently in the process of renewing one of my trademarks, a thread with a photographer who I’m in the process of getting product photos done by, a thread with my accountant about a form we are working on filing for my business, a thread with a preschool that I’ve been talking with for Evvy, etc.
- Important Info: This folder has the subfolders Bills (and then each bill has its own subfolder within that folder), Everly (with subfolders of Schools, Swim, and Pediatrician), Taxes (with subfolders of our tax info for each year), Insurance (this is where I keep emails that have the link to any insurance card we might need), Kids’ Church, Therapy, Memberships (zoo, kid’s museum, etc.).
- Memories: This is a folder where I put any kind of encouraging emails that I want to save.
- Orders: This is a folder where I keep things I’ve ordered online that I’m waiting to receive. I also have subfolders in this one called Gift Cards and Ongoing (this is where I keep receipts for like AppleCare or other warranties).
- Within Apple Mail, there is a built-in junk folder where messages that look like spam go. And tbh, it’s pretty accurate. I rarely have to move things out of spam to my actual inbox. And of course, there is a trash folder where emails that I delete go.
And that’s an overview of what it looks like, folder-wise in my inbox.
Now that you have an idea of how my inbox is set up, I’m gonna share all of the habits and routines that I do to keep my inbox clutter-free.
I probably hit “inbox 0” aka my inbox being empty 2-3 times a week. My inbox hardly ever has more than 5-6 emails in it at one time though because of these habits and routines. I am not striving for perfection which is why I’m not stressed about my inbox being at 0 all the time.
– I check my email 2-3 times per day. Usually 3 times on my work days and 2 times on my non-work days. I check it once in the morning from my laptop – I go through each email, sort every email into its appropriate folder, and unsubscribe from any email lists I don’t want to be on anymore. I also clear out my junk folder. This usually takes me 10 minutes, depending on how many emails I need to respond to. If an email just requires a typed response (and not me filling out a form or sending an attachment or something) I typically answer it right then and there. If something requires more work, I will move it to the In Progress folder so that I can tend to it when I’m sitting down at my laptop to focus on emails (I’ll talk more about that in a minute)
If there is something I plan to take care of that day, I leave it in my main inbox instead of sorting it into the “In Progress” folder. So for example, one email I got today was from Dime, alerting me that there is a sale tomorrow – so I’m planning on drafting an Instagram story later today to post tomorrow and I need the info in that email to do that. Once I draft my story, I’ll delete the email. That is part of my morning sort…deleting emails that are trash instead of leaving them sitting in my inbox.
On my work days, I usually do a post-lunch email check to see if anything pressing came in for work. I do this on my laptop as well since I don’t get my work emails sent to my phone. This usually takes 10 minutes.
And then I do one more check, usually from my phone, before getting off my phone for the night – for this check, I don’t respond to any emails, I just sort anything that came in that needs sorting, unsubscribe from any email lists I no longer want to be on, and clear out my junk folder. This takes like 2-3 minutes.
So that’s less than 25 minutes of inbox management a day which is worth it to me to not have an overflowing/stressful inbox.
– Every Tuesday, which is my first work day of the week, I go into my “In Progress” folder and give attention to anything that I’m able to. I usually spend 30 minutes on Tuesdays working through emails during this time and this includes both personal and professional in progress emails. I clear out my trash folder during this time.
– Once a month, as a part of my “first of the month” list, I go through all the folders and delete anything that doesn’t need to be kept anymore. This doesn’t take that long, maybe 10 minutes, because none of the folders are ever overly full since I clear them out once a month.
2 other habits that help me with inbox management:
– I have my office hours in my work email signature.
”My office hours are Tuesdays-Thursdays from 10 AM-4 PM EST. My response time is 2-3 business days — thanks for your patience 🤍”
Having this line as a part of all of my email correspondence relieves me of the pressure to answer every single email I get right away because I am clearly communicating that I don’t answer emails every day.
– I don’t leave my inbox open all day long and don’t get email notifications.
During my work days, when I’m at my laptop for extended periods of time, I keep my email inbox closed and on my phone, I don’t allow notifications for emails. I have to manually open up my inbox to see if any emails came in.
I don’t know if having designated email checking blocks/not getting notifications helps with inbox management but it sure does help with email sanity so I thought I’d throw them in here for good measure, lol.
And that sums up how I organized my email inbox and how I hit inbox 0 on the regular! The cool thing about this system is that since it’s every day, it’s not that big of a deal if I miss a day or 2. I just pick up and keep going!
It’s so easy for me to quickly find emails that I need and I never feel like anything is falling through the cracks in my inbox thanks to this system that I have in place to support me.
HAVE YOU HEARD?
The 2025 Paper Planning Collection is almost here!
Loved this blog post? Tune into the full podcast episode below!
