The beauty of an empty inbox

Over the last few years working at Connected, we've gone through a change in process and attitude to all things digital. What was once stored on one's own machine is now stored up in the cloud and pretty much nothing is hidden from one another.

Part of this move to cloud based computing has included forming a new habit encouraged by Martin, our CEO, to keep inboxes as clear as possible. A clean, uncluttered inbox leads to a clean uncluttered mind.

Inboxes can be horrible places. If you get an influx of new messages that need to be dealt with, you can get flustered and even get a bit stressed with having to deal with that as well as all your other daily duties.

There are a number of effective ways you can deal with email. One such way is to set aside 2 time slots each day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, where you do nothing but sort your inbox, responding, deleting, filing etc. This allows you to keep on top of your mail and ensures clients aren't left waiting for responses.

I happen to be quite lucky that most of my email tends to come in the form of notifications from Basecamp, the collaborative online application we use to manage our projects, so my inbox is very easy to keep on top of. Whether you receive 10 emails a day or 200, sorting through your inbox and leaving it empty allows you to stay on top of things and keeps your mind focused.

Originally published for Connected UK