Back in 2017, I spent about 40 minutes a day on email, stressed by an overfilled inbox. Now, I hit inbox zero daily in less than five minutes, even with lots of newsletter subscriptions. What changed?
At first, automated time-tracking with RescueTime helped me realize how much time I was wasting on email. But the real game-changer was learning smart email triage. David Allen’s “2-minute rule” is great, but it’s even better when you realize you don’t need to read or reply to every email right away. Instead, just channel them forward: handle short replies on the spot, export longer ones to a task manager, send newsletters to read-later apps, and sometimes file emails as reference material. This way, I touch 95% of my emails only once.
I also stopped treating my email client like a task manager or storage place. Now, I see it more like WhatsApp—a tool purely for communication. Other than “waiting for” and “invoices,” I have no folders. Everything goes to the archive once dealt with.
With the right workflow, you don’t need fancy tools like Superhuman to save time. The right approach is sufficient.
Amen! I love the two-minute rule.
It’s such a simple one but always so effective!
Back in 2017, I spent about 40 minutes a day on email, stressed by an overfilled inbox. Now, I hit inbox zero daily in less than five minutes, even with lots of newsletter subscriptions. What changed?
At first, automated time-tracking with RescueTime helped me realize how much time I was wasting on email. But the real game-changer was learning smart email triage. David Allen’s “2-minute rule” is great, but it’s even better when you realize you don’t need to read or reply to every email right away. Instead, just channel them forward: handle short replies on the spot, export longer ones to a task manager, send newsletters to read-later apps, and sometimes file emails as reference material. This way, I touch 95% of my emails only once.
I also stopped treating my email client like a task manager or storage place. Now, I see it more like WhatsApp—a tool purely for communication. Other than “waiting for” and “invoices,” I have no folders. Everything goes to the archive once dealt with.
With the right workflow, you don’t need fancy tools like Superhuman to save time. The right approach is sufficient.