MS

Hello, I’m Michael Sliwinski, founder of Nozbe - to-do app for business owners and their teams. I write essays, books, work on projects and I podcast for you using #iPadOnly in #NoOffice as I believe that work is not a place you go to, it’s a thing you do.

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Emailing like texting - how to get back to inbox zero and make every email a GTD “2-minute rule”

✔️Productivity

In the last years I had some serious problems replying to emails from people. Internally we don’t use email at Nozbe, but people from the outside had serious problems emailing me - either because I was throwing my assistant at them, or because I really took lots of time (weeks or even months!) to reply. This all changed last month by introducing a new way of dealing with email - “emailing like texting” which I introduced inspired by Katie’s article from Buzzfeed. Now my email inbox is at zero most of the days and I don’t need an assistant as much as I used to. Here’s how it works:

Emailing like texting - how to get back to inbox zero and make every email a GTD “2-minute rule”

Emailing like texting - 3 basic rules:

Rule 1. No “hello”, no “best regards”, no nothing - I go straight to the reply, no niceties, no greetings or wishes.

Rule 2. Straight to the point - one sentence only - just a one sentence reply that gets straight to the point. Two sentences max if I feel really “talkative”. This makes replying on the go from my iPhone just so much easier.

Rule 3. Reply once a day and go down to zero - I open email only once a day, go down to inbox zero - send quick replies, unsubscribe from mailings, create quick filters if needed and archive the rest. Tomorrow is another day.

Bonus rule. Don’t use email internally with the team - only use email to contact people outside of your team. I’ve written about that before already.

Emailing like texting - why?

Here’s why it works and I think it’s great:

Emailing like texting - how?

Here are a few tips and tricks that help me process emails this way:

Nozbe is completely self-funded or better yet - customer funded. We have no outside investors and we’ve never had them and are not planning to get them…

Thanks for your email! I read it and replied briefly, because I’m emailing like texting.

Emailing like texting is fun!

After more than a month of emailing like texting I must admit I love this style of processing email. It’s so much fun and I feel so much more in control of my email inbox and so much more in touch with people who do email me. Don’t believe me? Feel free to contact me and you’ll see how I apply this rule in action! :-)

And then try it yourself! Good luck! 👍

Monday, August 26, 2019 /emailing-like-texting/