One-Touch to Inbox Zero
Clear any email in seconds by choosing one of only six possible actions
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 88%
One-Touch to Inbox Zero treats the inbox as something to be emptied, not used as a to-do list. Forte's insight is that despite email feeling like an overwhelming monster, there are only six things you can ever do with any given message: archive or delete it, reply to it, turn it into a task (with a link back to the original), send it to a read-later app, save it to a reference or note-taking app, or add it to your calendar. Because the decision set is fixed and small, you can process each email in seconds. Pairing this with batching, deliberately letting mail accumulate and then clearing it all in one session, means the whole week's inbox can be cleared in about an hour once the six-action habit is engrained.
Origin
Forte wrote one of his most popular all-time articles, 'One-Touch to Inbox Zero', laying out the fixed set of actions for any email. It was widely shared, including inside his private members' community.
Core principles
- 01Your inbox is not your to-do list; every lingering email is an open loop
- 02Any email can be resolved with one of only six actions
- 03Speed comes from deciding once, not re-reading repeatedly
- 04Batch processing turns hours of email into a single fast session
How to run it
- 1
Archive or delete
The most common case. Many emails are just notifications, a package delivered, a subscription renewed, that need a split second of attention or none. Archive rather than delete so you can find it later.
Pro tip In Gmail, archive instead of delete so the message stays searchable for later reference.
- 2
Reply
If the loop needs to keep going, reply in some way. Apply David Allen's two-minute rule: if it takes under two minutes and it is in front of you, just do it now.
- 3
Make a task out of it
Create a task in your task manager with a link that goes back to the original email, so you can act on it later without the email cluttering your inbox.
Pro tip The single most valuable task-manager feature is creating a task that links straight back to the source email.
- 4
Send it to a read-later app
For something you want to read but not now, push it to a read-later app rather than interrupting your email processing to read it.
- 5
Add it to a reference app
If there is a snippet of text or an attachment you will need again, save it to a note-taking or reference app such as Evernote, Bear, or OneNote.
- 6
Add it to your calendar
For anything time-bound, add it to your calendar, increasingly just by accepting an invite.
In the wild
Forte more or less ignores his email all week, popping in only if he knows something is coming. He deliberately lets messages accumulate so that by Monday there are as many emails as possible. He then batch-processes all of them in one gigantic session as part of his weekly review, spending only seconds per email by running each through the six actions. The entire session takes about an hour.
→ A full week of email cleared to inbox zero in roughly an hour, with email never derailing the working week.
Common mistakes
Using the inbox as your to-do list
Most people leave every email in the inbox as an open task, which turns the inbox into an unmanaged pile of open loops instead of a stream to empty.
Reading and re-reading the same email
Touching an email repeatedly without deciding an action wastes time; the method depends on making one of the six decisions on first open.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone drowning in email who wants a fast, repeatable way to reach inbox zero.
Not ideal for
Someone whose job genuinely requires living inside continuous real-time email.
From the transcript
“it's just the fact that you're not using your email as its do list right which is what most people do each email in their…”
“isn't it amazing that you can distill email down that's this crazy big monster to just six things”
From the episode
The Definitive Guide To Digital Productivity - Tiago Forte - #074
Tiago Forte