> If they are important but I don't want to deal with it now, I 'star' it in gmail.

Does this eventually make your starred emails like everyone else's unread? Do you have to "declare starred email bankruptcy"?

I'm like this, without the extra added steps. I have 2500 unread emails in my inbox, I skim over what's new in the inbox and read what I want that's it, the important thing is search.

I've found this is applying to almost everything I do for a while now. Started with gmail, its google after all I can just search.

I don't "organise" my inbox, if I need to find an email I'll search for it.

I have over 70 tabs open in chrome, if I need to find a tab I search for it. Using vimium I press shift+t and just search for the tab, if it doesn't find the tab it opens a google search for it.

I don't ever organise my files/downloads folder, If I need to find a file I command+space and write open yellow-subm. Using Alfred

I don't bother with folder structure organisation, every project is a folder under ~/src folder, if I need to go to the server project I write on the terminal `z serv`, and it cd's into the folder. Using z[0].

I don't bother with which buffers are open in vim, if I need to see the file drink something controller file I press <leader>t and write drikcontrol. Using command-t

If I want to put the computer to sleep I press command+space and write sleep. Again Alfred

I think what changed for me is I don't really care about the structure/organisation I care about getting the thing I want. I either want to find something (search), or do something (command).

I guess the important thing is the organisation is implicit on the name/contents of the thing I'm looking for.

The only problem that rises from this is if a co-worker asks where a code file is I usually don't know, but then I solve that by <leader>t name-of-file and check the path.

[0] https://github.com/rupa/z

So the Inbox Zero (and Getting Things Done, which is basically the overlying philosophy) is basically for people for which the status quo doesn't work. If you're able to manage your data without an empty inbox, that's great!

But if you're "suffering" from your e-mail, Inbox Zero is great for a couple reasons:

- The rules are simple. Read it, then archive, reply immediately, or archive it but put "reply to this email" in your todo list.

- The success state is simple. Is your inbox non-empty? Empty it. Is it empty? Go away.

- It's about aggressive honesty. You won't reply to your aunt's email from 2 weeks ago. Replying with a one-sentence thing in 30 seconds is OK.

- It fits with "email bankruptcy". Honesty and feeling of dread means you should really just empty your inbox.

the core thing is that it removes decision-making from the process of checking your email. For people who struggle with organisation, this is a bit of a godsend. Sure, you still have to reply, but for a lot of people following the Inbox Zero rules you'll end up feeling a lot less totally useless stress from staring at your inbox (even if it's just somewhere else).

It's sensible advice for people who don't have a working system. If you have a working system, you should totally use that though, it probably works better for you. Though maybe your system isn't working as well as you might hope, so it's always good to experiment.

I feel like Inbox Zero is mostly for people that receive massive quantities of email that they also have to act on.

For people like me who mostly receive updates and notifications via email and only occasionally receive actionable content through email it doesn't make sense to have some sort of superset of methods on top of what my email software already provides.

I read the stuff that's interesting to me, I pin things I need to take care of later or remember (I use Inbox), I reply to things that need replying to which typically only happens a handful of times per week, and that's that.

If I ever get to the point where I am pinning several emails per week and find that I have to act or reply on more than the handful of emails per week that I already do I will consider a method for staying on top of my inbox but until then the built-in tools already do it well enough for me.

Also I would start by looking into the tools themselves to see how they could help me, rather than inventing a set of rules for how to use my inbox. Filtering, bundles in Inbox, etc.

But hey, to each their own. I would get stressed out with an Inbox Zero mindset.

That's a good point. If E-mail is your RSS, then this might not work for you.

Part of it is definitely feeding into an urge to be an e-mail completionist (for me this has ended up with me unsubscribing from a _lot_ of email notifications), so there is an argument that IZ feeding into the obsessive parts of ourselves.

The whole "Getting Things Done" mindset is that you have to make a call on everything, so you have to act on it. Like if you get a promo coupon, you need to set some time to go browse the website if you're thinking of using it. Nothing takes 0 seconds, right?

It's the sort of stuff to apply if you feel like your time is being sapped away an you're not sure why. As one of those people, it's helped me a lot, so I recommend it because I know others out there are like that... but no point putting a Band-Aid where there's no problem right?

> I make sure I mark the most recent email as read. Then, I look back until I find the next email marked as read.

I don't have to do any of this or have a special system. I just read my email. If an email is unread, it's unread. If it's in the inbox, it hasn't been dealt with yet.

That's where the "need" comes from: it's the simplest way of achieving exactly the same result you achieve with your system.

I use basically the system described above, because I have tons of emails that I never intend to read (e.g., from mailing lists). The system of leaving them all in my inbox is simpler than having to explicitly archive them all.

If I were you I would use a filter to auto-archive all those mailing-lists you don't intend to read.

You're just talking semantics here - you have a different definition of "read email" and "archive" than the author. The article is just explaining how to process all of your email and take action on the relevant portion, which you seem to have under control just fine.