Drowning in emails? This is your life raft. Discover the shockingly simple 4D system for inbox mastery and the little-known hacks top performers use to never miss an important email and stay on top of tasks. Listen now, so you can close your inbox with confidence.
The Audio/Podcast
Links to References In This Episode
The “Done With You” Email course Brian mentioned, is available as part of the Productivity Gladiator monthly membership. It’s like a monthly Starbucks for your professional development. This special introductory offer will never be available again. By getting in now you’ll be grandfathered in to all of the future upgrades, content, and tiers.
Episode Digest
Reclaim Your Inbox!
Email is the biggest productivity drain of the modern workforce. We're all drowning in a never-ending deluge of messages, requests, and digital noise clogging our inboxes. But what if there was a simple way to cut through the chaos and achieve the mythical "inbox zero"?
The answer lies in adopting a systematic approach to email management. By implementing a few core principles and key strategies, you can kiss inbox overwhelm goodbye and operate from a distraction-free zone of productivity.
The Necessity of Inbox Zero
“If you’re bad at email, then you’re probably also bad at coming through on things that I ask you for and taking care of things on your to-do list.”
While some argue that an empty inbox is optional, the reality is quite different. As the anecdote about the overflowing maintenance inbox illustrates, an unprocessed inbox is a leading indicator of dropping balls and missing commitments:
"If you don't have a really well developed system and you don't get to zero emails in your inbox once a day, I've got a system for you...Because if you're bad at email, then you're probably also bad at coming through on things that I ask you for and taking care of things on your to-do list."
Top performers excel at email processing precisely because it's the gateway habit to responsiveness and accountability on all fronts. Aiming for "just a few" emails is settling for subpar follow-through.
The 4D System: One Core Underlying Process
At its core, mastering email demands implementing a simple 4-step decision matrix for every single message that hits your inbox:
Deal with it - If it can be done in under 2 minutes, respond immediately and archive.
Delegate it - If it's someone else's responsibility, forward accordingly with a follow-up reminder for yourself if needed.
Defer it - If it requires longer action, capture it in a task list or snooze it, then remove it from your inbox.
Delete it - If it provides no further value, delete or archive it.
“You have to delete or archive it out of your inbox once you reviewed it and there’s nothing left to do with it.”
"You have to delete or archive it out of your inbox once you reviewed it and there's nothing left to do with it."
Processing each email through this consistent 4D workflow is the golden key to inbox zero. Coupled with a cadence of tackling your inbox in bursts 3-4 times per day, your backlog will rapidly become a fading memory.
5 Turbo-Charged Email Hacks
Of course, true email mastery extends beyond the 4D method alone. Here are 5 powerful email-optimizing tips from the pros:
Send & Archive Button - Configure a shortcut to simultaneously send your reply and archive the original thread from your inbox.
Schedule Send - Delay email delivery for optimal sending windows to boost response rates and avoid training recipients to expect 24/7 availability.
Snooze Emails - Leverage snooze functions to temporarily remove emails requiring future action until the appropriate date/time.
Use Templates - Create saved templates for frequently sent messages to streamline composing.
Close Your Inbox - Also disable notifications. You want that inbox CLOSED until you choose to open it later.
"I want nothing. Close your email. And if you're really bad about this, I can already say this is probably gonna be like trying to quit cigarettes."
The Bottom Line
For too long, we've labored under the false belief that digging out from inbox insanity is an epic, endless struggle. But as you can see here, a simple shift in mindset and habits is all it takes to permanently shed that productivity succubus.
No more opening your email app with dread, scrambling to catch up on a backlog spanning weeks or months. Just a pristine, zen-like inbox awaiting your orders each morning. That's the power of inbox zero - reclaiming control over your priorities and attention. It's time to rise as the email ninja you were born to become.
“Close your email. And if you’re really bad about this, I can already say this is probably gonna be like trying to quit cigarettes.”
CAN I TEACH YOU EMAIL, THE RIGHT WAY?
This episode was full of great information, and is only about a third of the lessons and information I teach you in the Email Course! It’s a part of the Productivity Gladiator Membership. I’ll share my screen, give you visuals, and walk you through the information I’m teaching.
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About The Creator/Host: I’m Brian. At age 4, I was diagnosed with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes and told that my life was going to be 10-20 years shorter than everyone else. As a kid I took time for granted, but now as an adult, time is the most precious thing that I have. After spending a career hands-on in the trenches as a senior project manager, I now help others to level-up through my Productivity Gladiator training. Graduates of Productivity Gladiator training wield time management & life balance superpowers, activate a laser-guided ability to focus & prioritize, and implement a sniper-precise approach to task & email management. If what you’ve seen or heard here intrigues you, reach out, let’s chat! Time is the currency of your life, spend it wisely.
Transcript
Brian Nelson-Palmer (00:01.286)
I'm Brian Nelson Palmer, and on this show, I talk about personal, practical, productivity skills. This is a knowledge drop episode where I just wanna share tips and hacks for you, and today it's about inbox to zero, the why, and the two, yes, only two things you need to do to hit inbox to zero, and I'm gonna share some of my favorite email hacks with you. So let's get into it. And by the way, this is my big news also.
is that my training, my productivity gladiator training, which used to be exclusively available to businesses is now available directly to you. You can join the productivity gladiator membership through the website and access my online learning portal. And here's what that means. On the show, On this show right now, this is DIY or do it yourself. What I mean by that is I'm gonna tell you about it and then you're gonna go figure it out on your own.
and the episode's gonna have some top tips, but there's not time for me to share everything. With the membership, that's now DWI, or done with you. What I mean is I now have a course where I'll share my screen, I'll show you exactly what to do, and you can do it with me in real time. I also can construct the lessons in a way that you'll get it about three times faster.
and the impact and retention is more than twice as big. The online learning platform is awesome. And this course is the cat's meow. I love teaching this course to businesses and now you can have it too. So not just the knowledge drop episodes, by the way, but Over the coming months, I'm gonna be releasing all of the productivity gladiator training that I've been giving to businesses and even more new trainings that I have in store. I am so excited about this.
So Right now you can take advantage of a special introductory offer that it will never be this inexpensive again. But if you're willing to take a chance on me, now you'll get that introductory price and I'll keep adding even more content and features and tiers and all of that. and you'll be grandfathered in because you started with me now. So It's seriously exciting times for me and for productivity gladiator. So let's jump into email. So email inbox to zero. Is it,
Brian Nelson-Palmer (02:29.794)
necessary? You know, I used to say no to this. Maybe it's not necessary. And then the longer I do this, the longer I teach this stuff, the more that I think that, no, it's not necessary. That's actually a cowardly answer. So I want to correct the record right now. And I want to say, yes, I do think it's necessary. Not all the time, not every time you're in there, but I think Once a day.
which for me, I clear out either at the beginning or the end of the day, most often once a day, I think you should get to zero. And I have a reason for this. so I'm gonna explain. Why it's necessary, let's talk about that. What I wanna do is I wanna share you a story. This is why I think YES it is necessary. I used to... work in an apartment building office. And this is back when maintenance and account requests were made by paper.
So instead of email that you're used to, they came in with paper. I worked at the front desk and I used to write up these tickets for the residents or the people that came in and I would drop them in the staff's inboxes whenever they came in. Ashley was my GM at the time and she processed everything in her inbox. Her inbox was cleared out every day. Greg was the maintenance supervisor and
he left all of his requests in his inbox and it was always stacked high. I'm talking like at least a foot tall. There was so many requests in Greg's inbox. Sue was one of the most, probably the most demanding residents that we had at the apartment complex. She
frequently. She was one of those people that shared everything that she thought, you know, and she had requests for both Ashley and Greg regularly. And, oh, she was a ranter and she loved to talk. So she would call me up the front desk and she would rant and rave wondering why her request hadn't been handled yet. But at the same time, she talked my ear off. It wasn't just the request. You know, people like Sue probably, right? She, she would tell me about the request and then
Brian Nelson-Palmer (04:48.014)
all of her other problems. I knew Sue's life story. You know, this is, so Ashley was on top of her requests. She was, Sue was always calling to follow up on the maintenance requests and never called for anything that Ashley needed because Ashley took care of it. So now, you know, I've told this story before and one of the things I've heard is, well, you know, maintenance requests.
there's more maintenance requests and they take longer than the GM requests. Well, here's the deal. We had a sister property and I knew the front desk guy over at the sister property, same size apartment complex, same situation, but he had the situation in reverse. His GM was terrible about getting to her inbox and processing the things in her inbox and his maintenance guy was on it and he had all of it taken care of.
So they had exactly the opposite situation where they had a resident like Sue, and Sue was always calling because their GM over there who didn't process their inbox wasn't it. So it wasn't the fact that my property had more maintenance requests. It was that handling the inbox was a big indicator. And I equate, this story was about physical inboxes, but email inboxes,
are kind of the same thing. So I equate them, have you heard of a gateway drug? Maybe this is a bad comparison for a podcast, but I think of this as email as kind of a gateway indicator. Meaning if you're bad at email, then you're probably also bad at coming through on things that I ask you for and taking care of things on your to-do list. I'm probably gonna have to follow up with you. You know those type of people that I'm describing.
in working with those people, it's a challenge. They're probably not gonna get it done the first time. And I look at this as a gateway indicator. So I want your gateway indicator to be at zero. Now, top performers, let me equate this to work, right? Top performers, the people who you would want to work with, they have a well-developed system to process and manage their email. They get back to you on those emails. I'm a really senior project manager and I often have some say.
Brian Nelson-Palmer (07:12.79)
within the organization as to who I pick to be on my team for these projects or programs that I'm taking on. So who do I pick? It's the Ashley's, not the Greg's. It's the GM who does her inbox, not the facility manager who doesn't. Those are the people, those people with that well-developed system, and the people who get back to me are the ones that I pick. Now, I've also been teaching this for a long time, and man, here's the other thing that I hear a lot.
but a few is okay, right? I've had some people tell me that a few emails is okay, and you might be one of those people. I've got, you'll say things like, oh, I've got only 100 or only 50. Ooh, look, I've only got 27. And it becomes this thing where I've got less than the other person. And if you're one of those people, how many is it? What is okay? What's that number? I think it's
zero. I teach people to get to zero. But I know you might disagree with me. And so I want to provide my answer back in the context of that story about Greg and Ashley, right? I've got Ashley, the GM, Greg, the facility manager. Now, if you were me and you answered the phone for our good friend Sue, who had all kinds of problems and the nightmare lady Sue calls and she has a request.
You're me, you write up that request, you walk to the two inboxes, they're side by side by the way, Greg's and Ashley's inboxes were right next to each other on the desk. You have Ashley's inbox that has no emails in it, and or Ashley's inbox, there's no requests and Greg's that's overflowing. Which one do you think will be the one that doesn't have Sue call me and follow up and say,
What's the status on my request? Why haven't I heard anything? And multiple phone calls. Oh my gosh, I'm gonna hear about Sue's cat and how she has smelly cat breath problems and why her daughter doesn't come to visit Sue anymore. And like the whole life story, I'm gonna get multiples of these phone calls. So if you're me, now, if you're in that situation, zero and a bunch is an easy question, but Now let me ask it to you this way.
Brian Nelson-Palmer (09:40.198)
If you Imagine there's three requests already in Ashley's box instead of the zero.
If you were me, would your confidence go down just a little bit that you might get at least a phone call from Sue because you're wondering what's going on? How many is too many? Same question you just asked me about email, right? If you walk up to that inbox and there's five or maybe there's 10 requests already in the inbox, how about 20? How about 50? What's the number that gives you?
If you're me, what's the number that gives you the highest confidence that you're going to put that request in there and you're not going to end up getting multiple phone calls from Sue following up on what you asked or what she asked. That's the scenario that we're in. In my experience in that real life, in this real life story, the number is if it was more than three requests and Sue's inbox, that meant I was probably going to get.
at least one phone call from Sue. And if there were 10 or more requests sitting in Ashley's inbox, that meant that Sue was gonna be calling me at least twice and I was gonna have two great phone calls with Sue. So.
I stand confidently and say that I believe that a few isn't good enough. For me, and I'm a teacher at this, I'm going to teach you to get to zero. Not some, not a few, not less than a hundred. I'm going for zero. And I hope that you set that as your goal too. Because I don't want anyone you work with to have to listen to not one additional phone call from Sue.
Brian Nelson-Palmer (11:37.15)
And that means you should clear out your inbox. So here's the bottom line. If you don't have a really well developed system and you don't get to zero emails in your inbox once a day, I've got a system for you. I've been teaching it for years. Please let me teach you. I love this. This would bring me so much joy. So now let's get to the topic for today, which is how do you get to zero? And then those hacks I was talking about. Here's how you get to zero. This is gonna seem real simple.
And here's how it works. It is the four Ds. Deal with it, delegate it, defer it, and delete it. So deal with it. I'm gonna go through them real quick. You look at the emails that come in, look at the first one, deal with it. If it takes less than two minutes, just reply to that email real quick, it's something quick, reply to that email. Deal with it, and then archive that message or delete it out of your inbox. Next up, delegate it.
If it's not for you, maybe this email is for someone else, then delegate, send that email to whoever it is that needs to take care of that. And maybe you need to schedule a reminder for yourself to follow up with that person, but get it out of your inbox. Third, defer it. If it's gonna take more than two minutes, or you can't do anything with it now, more than two minutes means, meaning your response is gonna take more than two minutes.
Maybe that goes on a to-do list. It's a full, it's a paper, it's something long that you have to, it's not just replying to the email, it's an actual task that you need to do. That might go on your to-do list or somewhere else and it goes out of your inbox. Or if you can't do anything with it now, meaning let's say it's like, for example, a request, hey, we credited back your account. If you don't see the credit in five business days, then let us know. Well, then you're gonna defer it.
to another time and I'll talk about snoozing an email later. That's a trick for you. So deal with it, delegate it, defer it, or delete it, or archive it as the last one. You delete it out of your inbox. Now here's the kicker, and this is the one, this is the step that many people miss, which is You have to delete or archive it out of your inbox. once you reviewed it and there's nothing left to do with it. So here's how this works. Deleting it, Imagine,
Brian Nelson-Palmer (13:57.854)
an email is a piece of paper. paper. You're going to read that piece of paper and then at the end, you're gonna delete it. If you're gonna delete it, that means you're gonna put it in the trashcan. The trashcan is gonna go out to the curb and eventually the trash guys are gonna take that trash away and that email will be gone forever. That's deleting it. However, in Outlook and Gmail and...
all of the email systems they have a way to archive it. Or maybe it's creating a folder that says archive if you don't. But I know Gmail and Outlook both have archive functionality or a folder that says archive. If you archive the message, that means you get it out of your inbox. And imagine take that same piece of paper and you walk out the back door and you leave it in the swimming pool out back. It's covered swimming pool, it's not gonna get wet. The email will be fine there.
The email systems now have a way for you to search through that swimming pool. If you ever need to find that email message again, it's going to be there. It's in the archive and the search capability is awesome these days. So archiving your emails is the way to get them out of your inbox. If you're done with them, that's the step that a lot of people have been missing. Maybe that's you. So if you're listening and you have a boatload of emails in your inbox,
Start right now and set aside some time to do the four Ds on your email inbox. And then when you're done with those emails, archive them out of your inbox. They're still there. You can still get back to them, but archive them. Get them out of there. And how long do you archive? I'd say two to four weeks. Generally, if an email has been sitting there for more than two to four weeks, if it's something that somebody needed from you, they will probably be sending you another
email follow-up for it. So I say two to four weeks is a rough, whatever's good for you. Don't lock into those dates, but go back and once you hit two to four weeks, archive everything out of your inbox. That'll get you to zero. Now, email hacks. I've got five email hacks that I want to share with you. The first one's a little one. This is the send and archive button in Gmail. If you didn't know this is a thing.
Brian Nelson-Palmer (16:19.254)
Go in the settings in Gmail and enable this button in settings. At the bottom of the message, there's a button that says send and archive. You can reply to a message and then hit send an archive and it sends the message and it archives the email immediately. That way you can always refer back to it later if they reply back to your email, but it's not sitting in your inbox anymore. So Send and Archive, that button is magic. I love it.
Number two, schedule Schedule-Send your emails. Please, there are two reasons this is super important. The first one is you don't want people to think that you work late. So if you send email messages at 10 p.m., 11 p.m., are you one of the bosses or supervisors that might be working some late hours? And then you send that email and it hits your staff's inbox and you even tell them in the message,
Don't worry about replying this tonight. Just let me know when you get in tomorrow. You're still setting the precedent as the supervisor that you're working way late. late. And that's not a good reputation for you to have because it sets the expectation, whether you mean to or not, that you work late. You're on late, you're getting emails after hours. So you don't want other people to have to respond late.
and you don't want people, it's unfair that they would email you and think that you're going to reply at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night. So if you are sending an email, schedule send that email to be the next business morning. You can do this in Outlook and Gmail, figure out how to do it. In Outlook, it's just called delay delivery. You can set that up that way. But this is a valuable skill for that. And
you don't want to set that expectation that you're expecting a response late. Or if you are, that's just it's a much better plan. And here's the other bonus to this. You can control when it hits their inbox because I don't know about you, but to me, if I email people on the weekends, the odds of them getting back to me, unless I already know that they're really on top of their email,
Brian Nelson-Palmer (18:40.598)
The odds went down by 50%. If it hits their email on Friday afternoon or Saturday afternoon, they just might get buried in the email, the weekend emails, they might not get back to me. So, you can plan when that email is gonna hit their inbox and schedule send it for Monday morning at 7 a.m. so that it's at the top of their email inbox. And what are the odds you're gonna get the response you need faster? It's that. So schedule send.
For the love of Pete, folks, this schedule send your emails is such an awesome thing. So make sure that you're taking advantage of that capability with email. Next up, number three, Snooze your emails. Gmail and Outlook online have this capability. And so imagine.
you have something that comes in that needs some sort of credit, right? Maybe like the example I shared earlier with a credit, some of the vendor emails you and they say, hey, I've credited your account. You should see that credit in three to five business days. Well, now that it's on you to get back to them in three to five business days. and if you haven't seen the credit, you're gonna have to respond to that email and let them know I did not receive the credit.
So by snoozing your email, that very same email is going to drop, pop right back up in the top of your inbox, three to five, whenever you schedule it for it will come right back at that time. And by snoozing that email, that's going to allow you to, it's going to be such an awesome way for you to stay right on top of whatever that thing is, because it's going to come back right when you need it to come back.
So Snoozing is available on Gmail. It's on Outlook online. Some of the desktop versions of Outlook, I haven't seen where they have the snooze capability yet. So to be honest, I've started experimenting with just using the online version because it has snooze. Or there's other ways you can do it. You can set up something on your to-do list. There's ways to snooze your emails or trigger them so that they come back at the right time. But regardless, snoozing your emails is a skill that I want you to have.
Brian Nelson-Palmer (20:55.262)
for your personal and your work email. Make sure you have a way to do that. Follow up then is another one that you'll see. All this stuff is in the course that I share. Man, I go into a lot more detail about this. But snooze your emails. Number four, Use templates. This is something in Outlook and in Gmail and in many systems, do you send the same email over and over again? Or are you on a team who sends the same emails?
Make it in a template? Or better yet, do you have a bunch of information that you always wanna put in the bottom of an email? This is something that happens with the programs that I'm in. If I'm responding, I'm gonna want them to have the link to the program, the link to the information on instructions on how to use something. I wanna provide them with the same information over and over again. So you can hit a template and then you can modify the email after you...
initiate the template, but it will go ahead and knock out some of those, the language that you need in the template. You're going to have it there already. So man, templates are awesome for email. And then number five, close your inbox and no notifications when you are not in your email. Are you one of those people that leaves your email open while you're working?
You leave it up on a screen on one side or, you know, by the, by the way, this is true of Microsoft teams or Slack. If you leave those open on a screen to close those, because unless your job is working at a support center where it's your job to reply to emails, then why do you leave your emails open? Here's what I hear. This is what people tell me. Well, what if my boss emails or what if something urgent comes in then what would happen then I'd be then I would miss it when it comes in you know if you were in a two-hour in-person meeting without your computer and you didn't get back to your boss until the end of that meeting would that be would that have been okay would that be okay and if that's the case for you in your role then I think you could probably close your email to focus on the productive things you need to be focused on. So does your job description have a requirement for how long it takes for you to reply to emails? That's a place to start at how frequently you can be checking your inbox. But ultimately, what I wanna do here is I wanna give you some confidence that you can close your email and be productive and come back and check it regularly. And...
Here's the other thing. You're closing your email, you're closing Teams or Slack, and there are no notifications guys. None. No notifications. No red numbers popping up. No dings, no pop-ups, no vibrations. I want nothing. Close your email. And if you're really bad about this,
I can already say this is probably gonna be like trying to like quit cigarettes or something. And I've only heard this, I've never been addicted to cigarettes, but they all tell, oh my gosh, you're gonna close it and then at first, then you're just gonna wanna, you're just gonna be thinking about it. And you're like, oh, I need a hit. Let me just check that inbox real quick. Just a puff, just let me get a puff. You're gonna do it.
Here's what I think. I think a healthy relationship with email is four times a day. I think that's the sweet spot for a working professional on how often you're checking your email and responding. So early to mid morning, before lunch, mid afternoon, and before you sign off for the day, those are the four times that I try to check my email and reply back to anything that needs a reply to. And by the way, if stuff comes in that is going to take longer than the two minutes, like you're going to need to get back to that person, you can reply back and say, “Hey, I'm not going to be able to get this to you right now, but it should be coming soon,” or acknowledging receipt of this, or something like that. You can acknowledge it and then copy that to your to-do list or put that somewhere else and archive that email out of your inbox.
So three quick things to close out here. First, we covered a lot here. Please try some of these things. Try the 4Ds. Archive and delete emails after you're done with them.
Brian Nelson-Palmer (25:38.286)
Try schedule send. Try some of those on your emails. Snooze your emails. Investigate that. How does your system do snooze? Can you snooze? Google that. Find out. Use templates. If you haven't used templates, Google it to see how your system does templates because there's YouTube videos and resources out there for that. And lastly, close your inbox for productivity. So that's first. We reviewed all those, some of those things and more. Please review those.
Second thing. If you have a friend or colleague who has a boatload of emails in their inbox, copy the link to this episode into a text message. Not an email, by the way, because after everything we just talked about, don't we know how that's going to turn out if you email it to them? So send a text to them, to the friend or colleague, and make sure you start with something nice. Don't talk about how much you appreciate them or something like that.
And perhaps you can mention that you were thinking about this kind of training for the team. And what do they think about it? That way you're not accusing them of being terrible with email because that text message isn't going to go over well. But I hope you try that and give that a shot. That way they think they know that you're not calling them out specifically.
And then lastly, That was five email hacks and just a quick primer. The online course I told you about that's part of productivity gladiator membership. It is my magnum opus. You proud of me? That was a big word. I use a big word there. Magnum opus. This is the whole kit and caboodle. It is all the hacks. It's all the productivity tips. It's a full onscreen demo walking you through the four D's and everything that I covered. Rules and filters. There is so much in that course and I love it. It's all of it. So Check it out if that's something that I can help you with.
If this is something that your team or your workplace could use this kind of training, please connect with me. I've been into so many organizations to teach this training and it's such, for me, I have fun. I love, love, love talking about being productive with email this way. So I would love to empower you and the people in your group to be way better at email. So thanks for the likes, thanks for the follows, the subscribes, the reviews, and the comments on the social media posts about this stuff. I love sharing Productivity Gladiator with you. That's a wrap.