Arrow-Tip #51 Limit Your Mailbox Size to Achieve Inbox Zero
Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that for the past week I’ve been very focused on maintaining Inbox Zero status. For those of you who don’t know, “Inbox Zero” means that at the end of the work day your Inbox has zero messages in it. Yes, Zero as in the number “0” and, no, I don’t mean by alienating all your clients and vendors so that no one sends you email anymore 🙂 I’ll list some of the benefits of Inbox Zero in my next post, but for now thought you all might find this quick tip for helping maintain Inbox Zero discipline helpful.
My Inbox Earlier Today
Given my passion for maintaining Inbox Zero (see Arrow-Tip #3 Limit Your Inbox to 15 Items or Less, Arrow-Tip #33 Managing Inbox Overload Part I – Arrow-Tip #37 Managing Inbox Overload Part V) this is hardly my first time there. But combined with all the new tricks I’ve learned over the past couple of years I discovered a new benefit – my overall mailbox size decreased by more than 50%. Why?
- I got rid of a bunch of junk that was needlessly taking up space
- I used Easy Detach (by TechHit) to save file attachments in my file system instead of storing them in Outlook
- By sorting on names I was able to delete large chunks of email chains and just keep the most recent item
- I was able to archive with confidence knowing that no “to dos” disguised as emails would get lost.
Now I can go to my Outlook Exchange settings and reduce my required folder size which is not only going to save me money on my monthly Outlook Exchange hosting fee, but will help me maintain discipline by giving me a warning message when my mailbox gets too big. I used to think those warning message were annoying, but now I welcome them as the helpful reminders they are to keep the clutter out of my Inbox.
Some of you may be worried that reducing your mailbox size will be a problem if you have several contact records, but never fear – contact records actually don’t take up much space at all in your mailbox. If you check the size of your mailbox you’ll find that the biggest culprit is always the mail items in your Inbox and Sent Items folders.
Hope this helps and look out for my next post on Top 5 best things about maintaining Inbox Zero.
Misty, you are my hero!
LOL – thanks, Corey!