Email
is the technology that everyone loves to hate. They use it daily, and most hate
every minute of it. I believe part of the problem
is the difficulty in coming up with a workflow that allows you to
efficiently use email. And by efficiently use email, I mean that whether
you are on your computer, a tablet, or smartphone, you can organize your
email and do work with the device you have with you.

Over the past couple of years I’ve been refining how I use email. The
problem is how to organize your email in such a way that allows you to
not miss important emails or tasks that need to be completed, but to
also provide quick responses to emails you are sent. The workflow I’ve
come up with I call DART: Delete, Archive, Reply or To do. It’s a
very GMail centric workflow, but can easily be adapted to whatever email
system you use. The beauty of it is that your inbox is always empty, and
any emails that need further action are in the folder To Do. DART
refers to actions taken with new emails.

Delete

Pretty self explanatory, the trick is to know what to delete and what to
not delete. I basically only delete SPAM messages that have gotten past
the SPAM filter or sales messages of which pertains to things outside of
my area. Deleting messages is in actuality a task that does not take
very often because Archiving makes more sense.

Archive

When you archive a message in GMail, it takes the message out of your
inbox and places it in All Mail. You can mimic this action with other
email services, just create an All Mail folder and move messages into
it. To locate messages a person will use search instead or organizing
emails into folders or labels. Sometimes it makes sense to put things
into folders instead of just All Mail, but in a majority of situations
it takes more time to organize your email into folders instead of just
putting them into All Mail and using search to locate your messages.
GMail provides search tools such as from: and to: to help locate
messages from or sent to particular people. Most of the email messages I
receive are archived because they do not warrant a reply and are not
something that is actionable by me.

Reply

If I receive a message that requires a short reply that will take me
less than a minute to write, I will compose the message and send it as
soon as possible.

To do

For messages that require a longer reply or ones that require me to
complete a task, they are moved to my To Do folder. This folder then
becomes my To Do list. I have one location where I can go and take
care of all my tasks, without rummaging through my inbox.

Conclusion

By using DART, inbox 0 is achievable. Messages you need or want saved
are in All Mail and messages that are actionable are in To Do.

Addendum

When using GMail from an iOS device, the default action is to archive
any email that is deleted, so, in effect, it combines the Delete and
Archive feature into just Archive. You can adjust this in your
settings, but I’d recommend using the GMail app for most of your email
needs (although you will still need your account added to your email
accounts in settings for sending emails from apps). A nice feature of
the GMail app is the Unread view.

BTW, my assistant really wanted it called FART (Follow Up, Archive,
Reply, Trash).