 Hey guys, I am Ken Ross here. I'm a business consultant that specializes in reducing costs for businesses by looking at their essential expenses But today I'm actually going to give you some really great tech tips today. It involves Something I'm very passionate about something. I think that really helps my productivity and I think a lot of you May not know about it or haven't heard about it And if you have heard about it, it's something that you think is very unattainable But I'm here to help you today and that is of course inbox zero What I hope to do here is I hope to give you some easy tips on how to Implement this today and also help you achieve very quickly inbox zero Concepts and be able to grow into this because ultimately this is a mental mind shift I know when I started looking at emails or I got into emails and productivity it's really hard to Stay focused when you get in an inbox because it's your work life or your life In an inbox and there are lots of things that can distract you inbox zero has this concept that you are only concerned about the inbox What's in the inbox as the new stuff and that that new stuff gets put away and your life in Mail is much easier. You don't have to spend a lot of time looking at stuff That could take your attention away from the things that you're out to do because ultimately email should be a tool for you So let's get right into it Okay, so first up. I want to tell you a little bit about Merlin man He's a guy who actually came up with the concept of inbox zero way back in 2004 Now I was actually introduced to this very early on I'd say about 2006 or 2007 or so A great IT architect that I know he introduced me to this concept because look I'm adopting inbox zero Let me tell you a little bit about it He started going into some of these things and I kind of looked at him and thought he was crazy But he had started adopting it and it was actually Producing a good result for him. He spent less time in his inbox He was much more concerned about getting certain things done and looking for those things as they come in he was always Seemed at least to be very responsive to his emails So there was really no change there because because in the end a lot of folks They think that emails or different forms of communications require Instant kind of response. Well, you're not going to really be able to do that. That's that's something that's that's very unattainable For a lot of folks, that's something that's kind of overwhelming right that you would assume that someone Read your full email and understood you fully. That's not how it works emails work in a conversational style You see a lot of mail clients these days they have all the replies and you can see the whole history of all the emails nowadays and that that definitely applies to the style or or kind of how Email is supposed to be viewed right is conversations streams of thoughts and consciousness to get and getting to doing things and Merlin man at the time he kind of knew this he knew this was the concept back in that that day and and as the as email has evolved in box zero has definitely stood the test of time when it comes to How to look at email how to process those things and so I'm out to actually give you kind of the concepts of what in box zero is and then some very easy tips and then I will also post in In the in the description of this video below Different resources you can go to to really get down to specific detail really do feel like what's important is to understand The they the aspect of inbox zero. So let's get into that. Okay, so the next thing you need to understand is that there are five Main things that you should think about when you look at an email in an inbox and that's delete defer Delegate respond or do right so Every time you get an email you have to think in your inbox I'm gonna definitely preference it with that and and I'll tell you why in a second One of those five things need to come to your mind Do I need to delete this right away? Just delete it if it's something that really isn't important to you Say it's some spam email from some unknown place or from a place that maybe you've Actually subscribed to on accident or was subscribed to you on accident and you're trying to get through your inbox Just delete it another aspect to that is you could just archive it and in the case of inbox zero What you would do is either use the built-in archive feature like in Gmail or other male clients Or create a folder called archive and just move it to archive. Next thing is defer, right? What is defer me? It just means I need to get it out of my inbox and I need to look at it later I need to follow up on it later because hey this requires some attention Outside of the scope of trying to get to inbox zero I need time to either process what this email is saying so that I can respond Or I just really need to defer all of this till I get more information from other places So that's where you want to defer things and ultimately in the case of inbox zero That's really left up to you how you do that But in a lot of cases and especially for myself what I like to do is I like to Organize some of my deferred emails into different folders Which are streams of consciousness if I'm working on a several different projects I may have several different streams of deferred emails in various folders in my male client people go in different directions with this and Merlin man actually just just basically Suggests that you defer all your emails to one inbox and that that to me doesn't really seem like that would help In keeping things better organized Because I like to organize things by what I'm working on and if I'm waiting for certain things from some some people I like to defer that stream of consciousness to that folder so that when I go to that folder and I look through it It's emails I know all pertain to a specific topic and it's been deferred because I know that's where I put it The next part I'm going to talk about is delegate. This is really important delegate kind of pairs along with defer Because what you're doing is you're sending this email off to someone else For them to get more information for them to actually do something with it And then you need to archive or defer or put that email somewhere else other than your inbox You're not allowing the the emails in your inbox to just sit around Because hey, I forwarded it to somebody and that somebody is supposed to do something with it And of course I'm responsible enough to want to follow up on those things, but I don't need it as a distraction delegate The responsibility of somebody else, but then defer the rest of that somewhere else so the next the next concept is respond now this is a Lot like delegate except for respond is more just on you Right, you're responding to a an audience of people or you're responding to people in hopes that this gets the ball rolling or keeps The stream of consciousness to get together enough so that you can come to a solution Right a response to an email doesn't necessarily mean that that is a done email that we're in a conversation here So your response is important But it but it also shouldn't be very stressful if an email is more than three paragraphs I try my best To slim it down even more and the way I do that is through different techniques I'll create a document and attach it to an email or I'll just say hey Contact me later because I really want to talk about these other things The reason I do that is because what I want the respondent To see is hey, I've put some thought into the response But there's really things we need to do here when you respond to an email Understand that a response to an email even if it's two or three lines or one sentence is a response And it's part of the conversation doesn't have to end there respond quickly to emails that you can respond to with either the question or a short answer or Some way to keep the conversation the stream of consciousness going don't worry about solving it That's not something we're out to do here when it comes to inbox zero What you're out to do is be able to respond to an email and then defer it or delete it or do something else with it So that is not in the inbox. It doesn't distract you It's not something you have to then say hey have I checked on my emails have a followed up with everyone You know because your inbox is empty Hey, so the last thing is do now There's a difference between respond and do the reason do is separate in the minds of most people when it comes to inbox zero is Doing actually requires that you've done some other thing outside of just the inbox I could certainly still respond to an email after I've done something But doing something actually is what email is all about right the whole reason you communicate with someone Via emails that hopefully some other process outside of mail gets done email is just a communication application It's just something to communicate a message to it's not something that can actually do something for you on your behalf Doing in this in this instance is you doing something as a result of sending of receiving an email, right? So do is that all right? Hey guys Ken Ross here on the editing floor as I'm doing this video. I realized this should really be in two parts So this is part one. I finished part one Stay tuned for part two. I know I leave you on suspense here I kind of give you the overview of what inbox zero is Next video. I'm actually going to show you some practical tips and things you can actually do to achieve Inbox zero and these are things that I do all the time and actually if you are really interested My inbox is at zero today, so I'm excited about that and I'm excited to share with you how I achieve that So stay tuned to this channel Please like and subscribe and share this video with that with all your friends and visit my website I am Ken Ross calm until I see you next time. I'll see you around