Clean your cluttered inbox with...Inbox Zero!

Picture this: After a long day at the office, you finally get home and go online to check your personal mail. You log in and what do you see? Piles and piles of mails from people; and not the personal how-are-you-doing mail. The ones which are inundated with queries relating to your work or unwanted “friend requests” from people you have never met in your life and never will. Get the drift?
Well, the simplest solution is deleting it. But when there are hundreds of mails just piling on in your inbox, the lure of the delete button seems to vanish. Also, there is no guarantee that your inbox will remain that way forever. New mails are gonna replace the deleted ones and the vicious cycle will start all over again. Well, here is a solution at your fingertips. Inbox Zero comes like Alladin's Genie to save the day.
What is Inbox Zero? Well, to put in laymen's terms, it is basically organizing and clearing up the clutter accumulated in a person's inbox. It is introduced by Merlin Mann, creater of 43Folders and he suggests alternative ways of clearing up overstuffed inboxes, other than deleting them. Some points which Mr. Mann suggests are listed as follows:
- Forward all your mails to Gmail: Gmail is one useful webmail that offers a lot of space (around 6.8 GB) and frankly, a better place to dump your mails cannot be found.
- Stop subscribing to every newsletter on this planet: You know, you are never read half of them that turn up weekly, in your inbox, so take a stand and unsubscribe.
- Filtering: Gmail or for that matter other webmails too, come with a filtering system, where you can filter your mails i.e. you can block certain people from sending you mails and establishing contact or you can create labels which is the same thing as creating folders on yahoo mail.
- Archiving: The best thing about webmail is, you can select multiple mails at a time and move them to “Archives” if you wish to read them later or “Trash” if you know you will never read them again.

Now, there is a catch to inbox zero. There is only so much that technology can do. But, if you wish to maintain Inbox Zero, you have to gear up. Just as a person on diet, sticks to his diet to remain slim, you need to be in action to keep the onslaught of your emails, at a bare minimum. The task is easier said than done, because Inbox Zero requires daily log-ins which most people cannot afford to do, due to time constraints. So, most probably, it can be termed idealistic but it does offer some valuable insights; for instance it shows a way to prioritize mails and offers quality email management and email etiquette. Thus, it cannot be dismissed out of hand. Like it or leave it, Inbox Zero, may be here to stay for a long time!