Having grown up with Outlook 2003 & 2007 , Thunderbird and other PC/Laptop based email clients, moving to Gmail was a little daunting, but I felt the advantages out weighed the comfort of staying put with Outlook. In those years of using Outlook I developed my own way of maintaining an empty inbox, or near empty, like I’m sure many of you have. Its about routine and practise, which then becomes 2nd nature and you almost achieve autopilot type procedures.
The biggest benefit is the portability of maintaining all my emails on any device, Laptop, desktop, phone and tablet. So 2014 begin with a shift to using Google Apps for Work (Gmail) for all work and private emails. I have multiple domains pointing to a single Gmail account was my way, kept costs down and had everything in one place.
In this year of using Gmail it soon became obvious I was not maintaining my inbox in the way I should. 3822 emails had accumulated in my Inbox with nearly the same again having been archived or stored folders (folders are not the correct description btw, we will talk about this shortly).
Now I am not saying that everyone should achieve Inbox Zero, it’s a personal thing, but for me it was something I needed to do for my own sanity and decluttering of the work environment. By creating a method that works, I achieved Inbox Zero in about 4 hours. Anyone can do this immediately if you suffer Inbox Chaos in Gmail.