There’s this random stat all over the internet saying knowledge workers get 121 emails each day on average. That oddly specific number is probably made up, but the fact that it sounds realistic is the real signal: office work is a constant stream of information and tiny decisions.
Before you say it: yes, the same problem applies to Slack and meetings. I’ll get to those elsewhere. Today we talk about emails. (And if you want the basics of writing better emails, check out Email Unwritten Best Practices.)
There’s a lot of advice about email on the internet. Most of it is useless, in my opinion, because it treats email as an organization problem: folders, labels, “do it twice a day”, “touch it once”, whatever.
That’s not the problem.
The real problem is decision fatigue. Email is an endless slot machine of “is this important?”, “do I answer now?”, “is this on me?”, “what’s the best reply?”, “should I keep this?”, “will I need it later?”, “what if I miss something?”.
That cost doesn’t show up on your calendar, but it eats your day anyway.
So you end up with two popular coping strategies:
- Inbox Zero: become an email monk.
- Just ignore it: become an email nihilist.
Both fail in obvious ways.
Inbox Zero
Inbox Zero says: once or twice a day, go through your inbox and “process everything to completion”. Delete, reply, archive, delegate, schedule, file. Inbox empty. Clean. Organised. Feels great.
I tried Inbox Zero. It gives you a nice dopamine hit, but it doesn’t scale if you’re in the middle of a lot of communication.
In practice, if you do it properly, it turns into a lot of time spent “doing email”. And unless you’re a little obsessive, things still fall through the cracks.
The math doesn’t work: if you get 120 emails a day and spend 1 minute per email on average (read, decide, act), that’s 120 minutes. Two hours. Every day. Forever. And that’s conservative, because the real time sink isn’t typing. It’s context switching and thinking.
“But Paolo, I love Inbox Zero. It keeps me calm.”
Sure. If it works for you, that’s awesome. Inbox Zero can be great if you:
- get less than 20 emails per day
- genuinely need to track every communication in detail
- enjoy cleaning your inbox (congrats, you found a hobby)
- have nothing better to do
Otherwise you stop treating email as a means to an end, and you start treating it as the end goal. You optimise the inbox instead of outcomes, and stay busy instead of getting things done.
You let the Gods of IMAP win.
The Twitter Feed Approach
So Inbox Zero burned you out, and the pendulum is swinging hard (ask me how I know).
“Ok, fine. I’ll just ignore most of it!”, I hear you say.
True story: I once had a boss with around 15,000 unread emails at any given time. His approach was basically: filter direct reports and the management chain into one folder. Everything else, he claimed it was likea Twitter feed (yeah, I know, we’re old). Scan when you have time. Auto-delete after 3 months.
He was brilliant and effective. He could pull this off.
Most of us can’t.
A lot of emails are genuinely sensible. You need to respond to people outside your immediate network. Your organization expects a baseline of responsiveness. Important stuff sometimes comes from unexpected sources. If you’re senior enough, people will chase you in other channels. If you aren’t, you just look sloppy.
The Twitter Feed method is what happens when Inbox Zero fails and you give up. It’s liberating, sure.
It’s also risky and expensive.
The Actual Goal: Control the Input, Not the Inbox
So let’s go back to principles. The goal is not “empty inbox”, and it’s not “ignore what arrives”.
The ideal state is:
- low cognitive load
- fast triage
- clear ownership
- without spending half your day achieving it
Meaning: when something is waiting on you, you can see it quickly. When it’s just information, it stops stealing your attention. When a conversation is in motion, you can track it without clutter.
That’s the problem to solve.
Here’s what I actually use.
Inbox Five
After a lot of experimentation, I settled on five folders, each with a clear purpose and a different workflow.
I call it Inbox Five.
The five folders (or labels, if you’re on Gmail) are:
- Inbox
- Action
- Tracking
- Reference
- Feed
This isn’t a filing system. It’s dynamic. Threads move as they evolve.
1) Inbox: Landing zone, not storage
Inbox is where everything lands. That’s it. Nothing stays in Inbox for long.
Once a day (ideally), you do a fast pass and triage. No deep reading, no replies. Just skim and decide where it belongs.
The exception is, if I can reply to the email in less than 10 seconds. If I can read a two line email, hit reply, type “LGTM” and hit send, I’ll do it. Otherwise it will wait.
If your triage takes hours, you’re doing it wrong. Triage is routing, not processing. I can sort an email in 5–10 seconds. At that speed, 150 emails is doable in about 20 minutes.
2) Action: A queue, not a backup Inbox
Action is for emails that require something from you: replies you owe, decisions you must make, things you must read because they’re directly relevant, tasks triggered by email.
Action is not where good intentions go to die.
Action is a queue. Queues must stay short.
If Action has 300 emails, you don’t have a system. You have a guilt trip.
Three rules keep Action clean:
Everything in Action must be actionable and owned by you.
If you can’t do anything about it, it’s not Action.Everything in Action must map to a next step.
Even if the next step is “reply no” or “ask one clarifying question”.Everything in Action needs to matter.
You define “need”, but “this looks potentially interesting” doesn’t grant access to Action.
Every time you touch an email in Action, only two outcomes are acceptable:
- you reply / decide / do the thing
- or you pull it out of email into a real planning tool (check out Industrial Strength TODO Lists), then move the email out
3) Tracking: Conversations in motion
Tracking is for threads that matter right now but are not waiting on you.
Things you’re waiting for an answer to. Delegated tasks you expect to come back. Threads where you need more info before you can act.
Tracking is basically “Waiting For”, without pretending you’re doing GTD inside Gmail.
If you need to act, it goes to Action; if someone else does, it goes to Tracking
The reason Tracking exists is to not lose track of things that might quietly stall.
4) Reference: Memory, not a library
Reference is where things go when they might matter later but don’t need action now:
- receipts and confirmations
- policy and process docs
- “here’s the deck”
- useful threads you may need for context
Don’t overthink this. Your client’s search is good enough. In some cases you can even link key threads from your notes.
Reference exists so useful stuff that doesn’t require action doesn’t pollute other folders.
5) Feed: Optional input, zero guilt
Feed is where newsletters, notifications, CC noise, monitoring alerts, company-wide FYIs, and anything that smells like “you’re included because reasons” goes.
Feed gives you permission to not care.
If that message truly doesn’t matter, delete it right away. But if you ever feel that little brain dance of “I should read this… not now… but maybe… but what if…”, Feed is your friend.
That dance is cost. Feed turns it into what it is: optional input.
Scan when you have a free minute. If you never have a free minute, it will go to waste. That’s fine.
I personally delete anything in Feed older than a month without looking. If something is truly important, it will be repeated, escalated, or forwarded by a human with context.
The Daily Workflow
Step 1: Triage Inbox (15–20 minutes)
Once or twice a day, do a fast routing pass:
- Move anything that needs me into Action
- Move anything waiting on others into Tracking
- Move anything that might be useful later into Reference
- Move anything that might be interesting but not important into Feed
- Delete any junk or useless email you get right away (and unsubscribe when you can)
Remember you’re not solving emails. You’re categorizing them so your brain can relax.
Step 2: Process Action in bursts
Action is handled in short focused blocks. You don’t live there all day. Schedule time to process it.
I try to keep Action under ~20 items. If it grows larger, that’s not a “productivity” problem. It’s a “commitment” problem. Something needs to be decided, delegated, scheduled, or dropped.
Step 3: Scan Tracking (5 minutes)
Quickly scan Tracking to catch what’s stuck, what changed, and what needs a follow-up.
I usually do this right before closing email after working through Action.
Step 4: Feed only if you have time
No guilt. That’s the point.
I don’t allocate time for Feed. It’s what I might read on a train, or on a slow Saturday when I have twenty minutes. If it doesn’t happen, I don’t care.
The Real Win: Less Attention Theft
Inbox Five isn’t about being organized. It’s about controlling attention.
- Inbox is triage
- Action is commitments
- Tracking is waiting
- Reference is memory
- Feed is noise
No heroics. No obsession. No 15,000 unread-email flex.
Just a system that assumes you’re a busy human, not a machine.