Summer EdTech Challenge #1: Inbox Zero

Welcome to the Summer EdTech Challenge! Summertime is a wonderful time to be a teacher! It's the perfect time to recharge your batteries, catch up on trends in education, read for pleasure, and learn new things. How about taking the opportunity to learn new tech skills or try out new tools and strategies?

Each Monday this summer I'll post a simple tech challenge, something you can do between dips in the pool and binge watching your favorite TV show. These challenges are practical, easy to implement ideas to help you develop your tech skills and start next year off on the right technology foot!

A few days ago my wife decided to help my young daughters clean their bedroom. When she was finally done and came out of the room she had two full garbage bags, one filled with garbage and the other filled with old toys, books, and clothes to donate to charity. The room looked fantastic, everything was in its place, and we could finally walk around the room! Bonus: she also found many missing items including clothes that needed washing.

Just like bedrooms need a good cleaning every now and then, so does your email inbox. The school year is over, most tasks completed, and teachers are preparing for a fresh start next school year. Now is the perfect time to go through your email inbox, prioritize and finish any tasks, delete old or unneeded emails, and employ a few strategies to reduce the number of emails you get in the future.

Your Summer EdTech Challenge this week is to get your email inbox down to zero (or as close as you can). Hop on over to my previous post, Mission: Email Inbox Zero and follow the suggestions there. At the time that I wrote that post our district only used InterAct for email. Within the last year many schools have started using Gmail as we transition into Google Apps for Education. Don't forget to apply this challenge to your Gmail account as well!

The previous post linked above has directions only for InterAct. You can't create folders in Gmail, but you can use labels to accomplish the same task. Directions for creating and using labels can be found here.

If you are interested in learning more about inbox zero, check out Merlin Mann's original work on this concept. He's the one that coined the "inbox zero" phrase back in 2007 and has a lot of excellent tips and ideas on managing your email.

Right now I have 420 emails in my InterAct account and 186 in my Gmail account. I'm committed to getting those down to zero if I can. I'll post my own reply here to let you know how I did.

In the comments below, let me know how you did. Were you able to get down to zero? How do you feel now that your inbox is a lot cleaner?

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Mission: Email Inbox Zero

image from Flickr

With my new job as a Digital Learning Coach working at 8 different schools this year, I'm pretty sure I'll be doing a lot of emailing. The most emails I've ever seen in my inbox was in the 500s. As I've worked with teachers I've occasionally seen email inboxes with thousands of emails - many of them unread! I've often wondered how those individuals know what important communications they might be missing!

Because I'll have so much potential email this year, I thought it would be better to start with a clean mailbox. I didn't quite reach my goal of zero, but I got down to only 36! All of these remaining emails are current conversations with teachers at my new schools.

In the Clark County School District we use FirstClass for our email system. Directions here will be for that software, but similar steps can be used in any email client. These tips can also be used to get control of your personal email inbox. Here's my list of tips that can help you take control of your email inbox.

GET LESS MAIL

No seriously, the best way to reduce the amount of email sitting in your inbox is to limit the amount of emails that you get. Do you subscribe to automatic emails from all your favorite stores announcing their weekly sales? We all have a tendency to check that box that asks if we'd like to receive regular updates or subscribe to the company newsletter. Take a good hard look at those emails and be honest with yourself. When was the last time you took action on one of them? Most of them come with an unsubscribe link at the bottom. Use it!

Do you use any kind of service like Edmodo that sends you email notifications every time a student posts? It's nice to know what's happening, but get in the habit of checking those services instead. You have to deal with those notifications within that application anyway.

Some of the unwanted mail is SPAM. Our district has built SPAM blockers, but some of those sneaky devils still slip through. Forward any SPAM you get to SPAM and then delete it. That helps the system recognize new SPAM. I noticed I was getting a large amount if SPAM from a particular site. So I created an email rule that automatically forwards it to SPAM and then deletes it. Now I never even see it in my mailbox!

Use mail rules to auto-delete SPAM.

DEAL WITH IT

Another great way to get your inbox down to zero is to either deal with the email or get rid of it. If you're planning to do anything in-between, you should have an explicit understanding of why you're doing so.

Your email is not a to-do list. If an email requires an action on your part, then move it to your actual to-do list. This will prevent you from looking in your email to see what isn't done yet. There are many to-do list managers out there. My personal favorite is Omnifocus, primarily because I subscribe to the GTD method of managing my tasks. It doesn't matter what you use, just as long as you deal with it. Then delete the email!

Sometimes you need to keep emails around for reference. Perhaps they have something like a serial number or login information. Perhaps it's an ongoing conversation you need to refer back to. Instead of leaving it in your inbox, move them to folders, or better yet, download them to your computer. To create folders in FirstClass, go to the File menu and select New then New Folder. You can then name it and move the relevant emails into it. 

You can choose whether emails appear at the top or side of your inbox and whether they are a list or icons. To do that, go to the View menu, down to Split and select either Split Horizontal or Split Vertical.

Emails with information you want to keep can also be saved to your computer as text documents. Highlight the text message and from the File menu select Save As. You can then rename it and save it to any location on your computer. Then delete the email!

These steps cannot be a one time thing either. You will have to be consistent with each of these. But if you are, you have a strong chance of getting that email down to zero!

What other tips or ideas do you have for taking control of your email inbox? Share them in the comments!

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