Email is neither dead nor obsolete. It is, in fact, increasing by 10+ billion emails per day and too many of those will end up in your inbox. Here’s how to get a grip and not let them overwhelm you.
If your inbox is a desert of minimalist white and you swiftly deal with the occasional email that dares sully the pristine tidiness, this probably isn’t for you. We’ve got lots more things to read that will be of more interest to you. But if you’ve got an inbox with hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of emails in it, you need a way to get things under control. “Inbox Zero,” which aims to keep your inbox empty, is trendy—but we have a superior solution.
We’re going to focus on a system known as OHIO, or “Only Handle It Once,” but not in a way that many people have misinterpreted it. OHIO is an information management principle that put simply, says you should only handle information the smallest number of times that is required—ideally once. As an efficiency aide, this is very useful. But, as with all good ideas, some people have taken it to extremes and preached OHIO as a golden rule that must be taken literally. This is both unnecessary and counter-productive, especially when it comes to dealing with email.
What Does “OHIO” Mean?
“Only Handle It Once” doesn’t mean that you should read an email once and never reread it—that doesn’t make any sense. Sometimes you need to read an email several times to understand it, especially if the person sending it doesn’t understand brevity. OHIO also doesn’t mean you should never see the contents of the email again once it’s left the inbox. That doesn’t make sense either because it forces you to respond to every email then and there, with no thought given to your current priorities or responsibilities.
What “Only Handle It Once” does mean is that you should only deal with an email in your inbox once. After you’ve understood the email, you should deal with it—“handle it”—and then either delete or archive it. You might see the information in the email many more times as part of a to-do list task or in preparation for a meeting, but you should never see the email in your inbox again. You Only Handle It Once.
Why Is OHIO Useful?
OHIO is pretty simple to understand, but why do we recommend it? What’s the benefit of only dealing with an email in your inbox once? Well, the answer is straightforward: Your inbox is not an archive, a bin, a filing cabinet, or a dumping ground. It’s an inbox!
When you have hundreds or thousands of emails in your inbox, they quickly get buried—and out of sight is out of mind. It’s much harder to find specific emails, it makes your mail client work more slowly (even if you access your email through a browser like Gmail), and it uses up your storage (which is a particular problem if you use the Outlook or Apple Mail apps in your phone).
The bottom line: There’s no point keeping all of your emails in your inbox and plenty of good reasons not to. “Only Handle It Once” is a system that encourages you to do something with an email once you’ve read it—to handle it—and whether you ultimately archive the email or delete the email, it won’t stay in your inbox.
What Does “Handle” Mean, Exactly?
“Handle” means that once you’ve understood the email, you do one or more of the following things:
- Reply to the email.
- Forward the email.
- Organize a meeting about the email.
- Turn the email into a to-do list item.
- Do nothing (if none of the four options above are needed)
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Source : Forget Inbox Zero: Use OHIO to Triage Your Emails Instead
