Email Productivity 101: Tips That Still Work 20 Years Later
In Episode 9, Moah and Alex explore how to handle email. After 15 years of running an email-focused company, you’d think we’d finally be good at it!
What is dead may never die, at least if you’re referring to email! This year, an estimated 376 billion emails will be sent every single day, once again setting a record. For the average office worker, that translates to over 117 messages landing in their inbox daily. It’s a relentless stream of requests, notifications, and decisions that can easily overwhelm even the most organized person.
Although real-time chat apps and virtual meetings present new issues, managing the email flood remains one of the biggest productivity challenges we face. While there’s no single magic bullet, understanding some core principles of email management and developing a personal system can transform your inbox from a source of stress into a… source of slightly less stress.
The Origins of Email Management
Email is now 54 years old, but the main systems that shaped modern thinking around managing significant amounts of it appeared about half that long ago. The conversation often begins with David Allen’s groundbreaking productivity method, Getting Things Done (GTD). Published in the early 2000s, GTD wasn’t only about email, but its central idea was revolutionary for knowledge workers: your brain is for having ideas, not holding them. The goal is to get tasks, reminders, and obligations out of your head and into a trusted external system. If you listened to Episode 1 of the podcast, this idea probably sounds plenty familiar!
As email became a primary channel for work, these principles were adapted to the inbox. The popular movement known as Inbox Zero, coined by Merlin Mann, grew from this philosophy. The core idea is that every email in your inbox represents an open loop or an unfinished task cluttering your mind. By processing each one, you clear both your digital and your mental workspace.
The GTD framework for processing items in your inbox is built around a simple but powerful decision-making process, often called the "three D's":
Do it. If a task takes two or three minutes or less, do it immediately. It will take you longer to file it, track it, and come back to it than to simply get it done.
Delegate it. If the task is not for you, forward it to the right person.
Defer it. If you can’t do it now, you need a system to remind you to handle it later.
This "defer" category has always been the trickiest. In the early days, people created complex manual systems to manage deferred emails. One famous method was the 43 Folders system, a physical filing technique adapted for the digital world. You would create 43 separate email folders: one for each of the next 31 days and one for each of the 12 months. If you needed to see an email again on July 15th, you’d drag it into the "July" folder. Then, on July 1st, you’d move it from the "July" folder into the "15" folder. On the 15th, you’d finally move it to your "Today" folder. It was a logistical nightmare.
This is why the invention of email snoozing (something very close to our hearts!) was a game-changer. Instead of manually moving an email through a labyrinth of folders, you can now simply tell it when you want it to reappear at the top of your inbox.
To File or To Search? No Longer a Debate
Another major shift in email strategy came about 15 years ago as email search technology incorporated techniques from web search and became significantly more powerful. Now meticulous filing is (or at least should be) mostly a thing of the past.. Creating a complex tree of folders for projects, clients, and receipts used to be standard practice. However, research has turned this idea on its head.
Studies have found that searching for an email is about 3.4 times faster than trying to find it in a folder. This doesn’t even account for the time you spend organizing and filing in the first place. The problem with folders is that they require perfection. An email about a flight receipt could go in the "Travel" folder, the "Receipts" folder, or a project-specific folder. When you need to find it later, you have to remember the exact logic you used months ago. With powerful search functions built into modern email clients, it's far more efficient to archive everything and trust that a quick keyword search will pull up what you need.
This leads to a related debate: should you delete emails or just archive them? With free accounts offering 15 GB or more of storage, the need to delete for space is less of an issue. The mental energy spent deciding whether to keep or delete an email is often not worth the minuscule amount of space you save. Unless it's obvious junk, simply archiving is the path of least resistance.
A Cautionary Tale: Always Check Your Spam
Even with sophisticated filters, email systems aren’t perfect. Important messages can and do get lost.
At our 20th year MIT class reunion (how did that happen so fast?!), astronaut and former space station commander Jasmin Moghbeli was the featured speaker. A highly accomplished MIT graduate and military helicopter pilot, she was a top candidate for NASA's astronaut program. After applying, she waited for NASA to contact her references. The day came and went, and she heard nothing, assuming she hadn't made the cut.
At the last minute, she decided to check her spam folder and found the NASA emails buried there. She frantically called her references, urging them to check their spam folders as well. They found the requests, submitted their recommendations just in time, and the rest is history. A similar story involves a restaurant that almost missed its invitation to receive a Michelin star because the email landed in their junk folder. The lesson is clear: if you’re expecting something important, always check your spam.
A Toolkit of Strategies for Taming Your Inbox
Developing a personal email system is about picking the strategies that fit your work style and challenges. Rather than following one rigid method, you can combine several powerful techniques to build a workflow that brings you clarity and control.
Technique 1: Triage Before You Process
Just as an ER doctor triages patients, a good first step in managing your inbox is to quickly sort and clear out what isn’t urgent. This prevents you from getting bogged down in low-value messages.
Perform a Bulk Deletion: Before you read a single email, scan your inbox and use the multi-select feature to check off all the obvious junk, sales pitches, and notifications you don't need. Delete them all in one go. Clearing out 10-20 emails in seconds provides immediate momentum.
Use a "Promotional" Email Address: A powerful long-term strategy is to pre-filter emails at the source. Create a separate, free email account (like an Outlook.com or another Gmail address) that you use exclusively for online shopping, newsletters, and loyalty programs. This keeps the vast majority of promotional emails from ever hitting your primary inbox, but makes them accessible when you need them.
Technique 2: Move Through Your Inbox with a System
Once the clutter is gone, process what's left in a systematic way. This avoids the common trap of randomly clicking on messages, which drains focus and energy.
Enable Auto-Advance: In your email client's settings, turn on the feature that automatically opens the next message after you archive or delete the one you're on. This creates a focused, sequential flow and prevents you from getting distracted by returning to the full inbox view.
Apply the Two-Minute Rule: For any email that contains a task you can complete in two minutes or less, do it immediately. Approving an expense, answering a quick question, or confirming a time is faster to do on the spot than to track and return to later.
Move Big Tasks to a To-Do List: Your inbox is not a project management tool. If an email represents a significant task, your goal should be to move that task to your dedicated to-do list. Use an integration that can create a task directly from an email, including a link back to the original message for context. Attaching this context automatically is key: emails, or email threads, will often contain much of the information you need to complete the task, and linking it to your to-do automatically will save you time-consuming admin work (or, god forbid, trying to remember the details in your brain!). Once the task is created, archive the email. It's now tracked in the right place, and your inbox is clear. Both Gmail and Outlook come with simple to do lists, but if you need a more powerful option, GQueues is a good to-do list app that we happen to build!
Technique 3: Master the Art of the Deferral
Many emails can't be actioned immediately. The key is to get them out of your sight and trust that they will reappear at the right time.
Snooze for Later: Use the snooze feature for time-sensitive but not immediate items. If you get a flight confirmation for a trip next month, snooze it to the week of the trip. If you get an agenda for a meeting in three days, snooze it to the morning of the meeting. Gmail and Outlook now provide free options for this, but if you’re a power user or need to snooze messages and have them only return if someone doesn’t get back to you, check out Boomerang for Gmail or Boomerang for Outlook, the products that first brought the concept to life and have continued to improve the features since.
Batch Your Brainpower: Some emails require deep thought and a lengthy response. Instead of letting them linger in your inbox, creating a persistent, low-level stress, set them aside and use a dedicated work block to power through them en masse. You can create a "Requires Response" label or snooze them all to a specific time, like 3:00 PM. This allows you to tackle these demanding messages with fresh energy, rather than squeezing them between other tasks.
Technique 4: Manage Your Emotional Responses
Finally, some emails are challenging not because of the work they require, but because of the emotions they provoke. Having a strategy for this is crucial.
The "Cool-Down" Draft: When you receive an email that makes you angry or frustrated, resist the urge to fire back an immediate reply. Instead, open a reply draft, but immediately delete the recipient from the "To" field so you can't accidentally send it. Write out everything you want to say, no matter how harsh. Then, snooze that draft until the next morning. When you revisit it 24 hours later with a cooler head, you can edit it into a professional, productive response that serves your goals.
Tip of the Week
Ready to build a better email habit? Try this simple, week-long experiment to train your brain to process your inbox more systematically.
Set Up Auto-Advance: First, go into your Gmail settings and turn on the "auto-advance" feature. This will automatically move you to the next email after you archive, delete, or mute a conversation.
Use the Flowchart: Print this simple flowchart that walks you through the decision-making process for each email (e.g., Is it actionable? Can it be done in <2 minutes? Do, Delegate, or Defer?). Tape it to your monitor so it’s always visible.
Run a 20-Minute Drill: Set a timer for 20 minutes. Start with your newest email and work your way down. For each message, use the flowchart to make an explicit decision. The goal isn't necessarily to reach inbox zero, but to practice the habit of making a quick, definitive choice for every single email.
Repeating this drill daily will help make the workflow feel automatic, turning a cluttered inbox into a manageable part of your day.
To learn more, listen to the full podcast episode.