Tame Your Inbox: Create a 2Read Folder

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll give you another tip for taming your inbox -- creating a 2Read folder.

My email inbox is the main way that information comes into my life.  I make a point to get to inbox zero at least once per day.  Does that mean that I handle everything that comes into my inbox right when I get it?  No -- it just means that I don't use my inbox as a to do list.  It's simply a staging ground.  

In order to do this, I have some rules around managing my inbox.  I quickly make decisions on each email: Trash, File, Act, or Act Later.  I delete emails I don't need.  I file emails that don't contain an action for me, but that I might need later.  I act on emails that I can take care of in 2 minutes or less.  Anything that takes longer than 2 minutes gets put on my task list.  

In order to do this efficiently, you get really motivated to get junk mail out of your inbox.  I have a video on my solution to that if you are interested.  The other thing that clutters up my inbox are articles to read.  I have subscriptions to two daily newspapers, to a couple of news digests that summarize the day's events, AND to several newsletters like Pocket that pick out the best articles from the Internet to read.   I like to read, I like to stay current, but I don't always have time to read every interesting article that comes into my inbox.  In fact, what actually happens is that i get totally absorbed in reading an article rather than doing what needs to get done.  The problem is that I almost always think that I can skim a couple of articles in under 2 minutes, but the reality is that it usually takes longer than that.  

Plus frankly, reading doesn't fit neatly into my process: if I file it, I won't remember to read it later, I usually can't read it in under 2 minutes, but am I really going to put reading some random newspaper articles on my to do list?  

Here's my solution.  I created a folder called 2Read -- actually, +2Read so that it sorts to the top of my list of folders.  Every time I get a email from one of my newspapers, my newsletters or my digests, I file those directly into my 2Read folder.  Sometimes, I'll take the time to skimm through the newsletter and click only on the articles that I want to read later.  Then I email just that link to myself to be filed in the 2Read folder.   

So, these are now filed.  When do I have time to read through them?  Every day, I set aside about 45 minutes to read in the morning after I get my coffee.  Sometimes I have time at the end of the day as well, but I definitely read for about 45 minutes every morning.  During that time, rather than scrolling through all of the potential reading material in my inbox, I go directly to my 2Read folder and start there.  I don't always get through every article, but because reading these articles is not urgent, I'm fine with that!  It is a great way to get things out of my inbox and have them all ready to go when I'm ready to read.

I also use Gmail's filters to help me streamline this process.  It's easy enough when I get an email from The Washington Post, for example, to quickly file that into my 2Read folder.  However, I'm always tempted to take a peek at the stories for the day.  Once I take a peek, I could easily get drawn into reading something rather than doing what I'm supposed to be doing.  So, I automate these actions as much as I can using filters.

You can only do this on the browser version of Gmail, not the mobile version.  To get to filters, hit the gears symbol, then Settings, then choose the page "Filters and Blocked Email Addresses."  Scroll down and choose Create a New Filter.  Now for example, my emails from The Washington Post always come from the same address.  So, I'm going to create a filter that looks for emails coming from email@washingtonpost.com.  Then I hit Create Filter.  Now I want to tell Gmail what to do with emails coming from that address.  I choose Apply the Label and then pick my +2Read folder -- Gmail refers to folders as labels.  Now I hit Create Filter.  Okay, so every time I receive an email from The Washington Post, it will bypass my inbox altogether and file it into 2Read.  That way I'm not at all tempted to peek at the contents of the email because I won't see it at all unless I open my 2Read folder.  I do this for all of the senders who regularly send me things to read.  In addition, I've created another filter that looks for the words "2Read," so if I forward myself a link to an article and include those words in the subject line, that will immediately be filed into the 2Read folder as well.

This has helped significantly to trim down my inbox quickly without spending a bunch of time skimming articles.  Let me know what you think!  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!