Inbox triage: sort fifty emails in ten minutes

An inbox is stressful because every message is an undecided question. Triage means deciding quickly — reply, schedule, delegate or delete — without doing the work yet. AI can help you design the system and write the short replies that clear most of the pile.

1. 1

   List the kinds of email you get

   Requests, updates, invitations, newsletters, things you are only copied on.

2. 2

   Decide the four piles

   Reply now (under two minutes), schedule, hand over, archive.

Why the inbox wins

Email feels like work, and that is its trick. You can spend a whole morning reading, flagging, half-answering and rereading, and finish with the same number of messages you started with and none of your real work done. The problem is rarely the volume. It is that every message demands a decision, and most people postpone that decision by leaving the email where it is, to be read again later.

Triage borrows an idea from hospitals. You do not treat each case as it arrives. You sort first, quickly, and then act. Sorting fifty emails takes ten minutes. Answering them one at a time, as they come, takes all day.

The principle: touch it once

Open an email and decide immediately which of four things it is. Then move it and do not look at it again until it is time to act. The four piles work for almost everyone:

• Do now: anything you can finish in two minutes or less. Reply and archive.
• Schedule: needs real time or thought. Move it to a folder or your task list with a date.
• Waiting: you need something from someone else before you can act. Park it and set a reminder.
• Archive or delete: no action needed. Most email belongs here.