Yes, it’s possible and yes, it’s worth it. My email was getting out of hand. I had 4 email accounts and thousands of emails in each inbox. Recently, I implemented ‘inbox zero’ and it took away a thick layer of stress. It’s incredible and once you do it the first time, it’s easy to maintain.
Where to start
Start from the oldest email you have in your inbox. Go through one by one and delete, unsubscribe, make a task out of it, move it to a ‘read later’ folder/label or schedule an event (meeting, appointment, engagement etc), create a filter that automatically puts it into an ‘Action’ folder/label or ‘Read later’ folder/label. There are many options for this. You need to do what’s right for your business and work style.
Unsubscribe
For the email lists that you are subscribed to, you don’t want to just delete them. Otherwise, you’re not actually getting rid of the problem. Perhaps you signed up to receive an eBook that you wanted but haven’t read an email from that source since. Or you signed up to get discounts and updates but realize it just makes you want to shop more than is necessary. So, unsubcribe now.
Filter
Unsubscribe then create a filter (if you use the wonderful and amazing GMail) that deletes all the emails from the source in one go, which will shorten the list of emails you have to go through in larger chunks. If you’re not sure about a subscription, unsubscribe anyway. If you truly miss it you can always re-subscribe.
Remove
Delete all the random emails you know you will never read. Things you’ve been copied on that didn’t actually require anything from you or surveys you have no interest in doing etc. Delete it. You won’t regret it. If you delete something that actually required action from you, the sky isn’t going to fall. The sender will follow up if it’s important. If it was important in the first place, it probably would have been done already.
If you’ve handled an email and it’s still in your inbox, it’s only causing confusion and you’re spending time and energy glancing at it every day only to realize, over and over again, that you’ve already done what you need to do with it. Get these emails out of your inbox. Archive them or move them to a folder/label. It has no business being in your inbox.
Take action
Don’t keep emails in your inbox because you need to do something with them, either do it now (if it will take less than 2 minutes) or put it in a task manager like Trello or Google Tasks or folder/label in your email platform called ‘Action’. The latter is a bit risky as you have to get into the habit of looking there. With a task manager, you can set up due dates and the platform will remind you. I personally use Trello and will be writing an article about how I use it to organize my life.
This is going to take some time so don’t expect to be done in an hour. If you are done in that amount of time, you probably don’t need this advice at all. I would recommend setting aside an entire day to do this. It will save you time and will prevent missed items in the long run so it will be worth it.
Once you’ve gone through your main email account, do this with all your other accounts. When all your inboxes are at ‘inbox zero’, forward all your accounts to one main account. For example, I have email accounts for groups I volunteer for or businesses I do work for. If I don’t forward them all to one place I have to remember to check each one regularly. It takes time to log in to each account and organize them separately. Plus, I used to forget about accounts that were seldom used and could miss something important.