Practical ways to care for your mental health: inbox zero

Being supported by family and friends, exercising, taking medications (prescribed by a healthcare professional), and working with a therapist are among the things we know to be helpful for our mental health. In addition to these, our mental health and overall well-being can be supported by taking small but significant steps in our every day lives.

On this blog post, I talked about things you can declutter that go beyond your belonging and your physical space. Among other things, you can declutter your mind, your relationships, and your time. These decluttering practices for your mental health can be broken down even further into simple self-care habits that be incorporated into our daily routine.

One of them is practicing what we many call “inbox zero.”

What is inbox zero?

Inbox zero it’s a strategy to manage your emails, specifically your inbox, in which all emails are either responded to immediately or later (depending on the time that would take to respond or priority level), archived, or completely deleted. It’s basically a way to declutter your inbox and keep it tidy, let go of unnecessary emails and most importantly, avoid the overwhelm and overstimulation that a saturated inbox might cause.

When practicing inbox zero, every email has a “job” assigned; they either go to a filtered folder to be saved for later, they are responded to right away or when we have the mental capacity to draft a response or they are archived, which means that they leave the inbox but they are not deleted permanently— they’re just “stored” away in case we need to reach for them later.

How would inbox zero help me care for my mental health?

The inbox zero method is commonly used as a strategy to increase productivity, efficiency and organization but for many, keeping an empty inbox can reduce the overwhelm by removing the overload of information. It’s not just about keeping our inbox tidy, it’s about helping ourselves to process and manage the overflow of information and communication that is coming to us via email. We can prioritize what is important to respond to or keep (like receipts) or turned to a task and discard what is not important or what can be let go of— because we can let go of all that pile of spam emails with offers or old emails with irrelevant information in our inbox, right?

Some questions to ask ourselves to do this:

What to do:

• Identify 5-7 categories of emails you receive in a consistent basis (i.e. PayPal, order confirmation, etc.). Email categories can be devised by project, type of task, etc. 

• Use these categories to sort your emails and create labels/folders to classify them.

  • Each label can have a sub label to further categorize

• 4 types of emails:

  • Emails that require a quick response

    • Respond quickly as you sort

  • Emails that require a task or longer response

    • File into your “current” or “to-do” label

      • Remember that this folder can also be sub categorized (broken down further)

  • Emails that require no response but has important information

    • Save the information and then archive

  • Emails that can be immediately deleted/archived

    • Delete and unsubscribe if needed

• Take action on every email:

  • Delete

  • Unsubscribe

  • Read + Archive

  • Answer if it doesn’t require a lot of time

  • Read + Save information 

    • [copy and paste] in a Google Doc/Google Task/Google Keep (Task + Keep are accessible through your inbox!) if you’re only keeping email in the inbox for the information in it. 

  • Read + Answer Later

    • If the email will require more time to respond or needs to be answered at a later time, label the email with “to-do” or “current” and archive it. [Access the folder/label you moved the email to when you are ready to respond]. 

  • Star the email and archive it if you are only saving the email because you are waiting for a reply. Check starred ⭐️ emails daily/every couple of days to “follow up.”

• When your inbox is empty, look at your “to-do” or “current” folder and devise tasks to get done. 

• Time block your time (assign a specific time on your calendar) to answer emails that will take longer to respond

• Use filters to automatically send incoming emails to your folders, especially those that do not need a response! (i.e. PayPal receipts, etc.)

• Important: If some of these systems are not working, change them up to what works!