I previously mentioned "Inbox Zero" as like the one piece of corporate-principle-type stuff from my new job that I'm actually 100% on board for, and I wanted to share an update.
So apparently it's relatively controversial in the business world whether "Inbox Zero" should mean that you have zero unread emails in your inbox, or you should have zero emails in your main inbox (i.e. everything in your main inbox is sorted into folders, and then you keep sorting them as you get them).
I started with the "zero unread emails" approach, where you make some folders, but anything that doesn't really fit one of your categories just stays in your main inbox as if that, in itself, is the miscellaneous folder. You open all your emails, but you don't sort all of them. That was cool, but I still found stuff getting lost on my last scan through my inbox because there were things that I opened, initially responded to, then forgot to follow up on.
So I switched to the approach of having zero emails in my inbox (and sorted like 30,000 emails across 5 email accounts over the past two weeks). Game changer. Now the only things I leave in my main inbox are things where the conversation, project, etc. has not been completed. Upon completion, they get sorted. Now my inbox is a to-do list, and I don't miss events, conversations, store promotions, - anything.
You can guess why this is very good and efficient for activism purposes, considering almost all the groups I work with communicate via email.
The screenshot above is from one of my misc email accounts (my personal has double-digits of folders), but all my accounts look like that now. Nothing in inbox, promotions, or social. I sort and delete things as I go. For my personal inbox, I let the promotions tab pile up for a month in case I get a store coupon that becomes relevant later, but then I delete everything in that tab at the beginning of each month.
This has been the hottest organizational tip that I've received in years, and it is vibing so hard with my ADHD.
^^^Credit to fellow Tumblrite, @catcrumb for this image which pops into my mind every single time I sort something.