Achieve INBOX ZERO on Outlook (in 10 minutes)!
About this video
Jeff Su adapts the Gmail-style inbox zero workflow to the free version of Outlook on the web. Setup comes first: turn off Focused Inbox, set display density to Cozy, group into conversations with newest on top, put the reading pane on the right, and in View all Outlook settings choose ‘open the previous item’ after moving or deleting and ’let me select which message to read first’ at sign-in. He then creates five categories, favoriting all of them: three action categories numbered to pin them on top (01 Follow Up, 02 Waiting, 03 Read Through) and two pre-categories (Trips and Newsletter). Categories are Outlook’s equivalent of Gmail labels and rules are its filters: a rule keyed to a sender’s address auto-applies a pre-category when mail arrives, so newsletters and trip confirmations never need manual tagging; he also sets search scope to all folders, turns off ‘show top results’, enables Outlook keyboard shortcuts, and favorites the Inbox and Sent Items folders. The daily workflow processes the inbox from the bottom up, starting with the oldest mail. Every email gets one of four treatments: archive it with the E key if no action is needed (newsletters and trip confirmations are archived but stay retrievable under their pre-categories), forward it with F and tag it Waiting with C when someone else must act while he stays responsible (he says the Waiting tag means chasing those colleagues every day), tag it Follow Up when he owns the action, or tag it Read Through for reference material like a new expense process. David Allen’s two-minute rule decides the borderline cases: if the action takes two minutes or less, do it immediately; otherwise categorize and archive. An email whose due date is a month out gets snoozed with B to one week before the deadline instead of sitting in Follow Up. When a Waiting item resolves, he archives it and removes the category so it disappears from that view. He recommends bootstrapping by processing the last four weeks of mail this way, then maintaining daily.
Key takeaways
- Mirror the Gmail system with five favorited categories: Follow Up, Waiting, and Read Through as action categories, plus Trips and Newsletter as pre-categories.
- Use Outlook rules (its filters) to auto-apply pre-categories by sender so newsletters and confirmations tag themselves on arrival.
- Process oldest-first and give every email exactly one outcome: archive (E), Waiting (C after forwarding), Follow Up, Read Through, or snooze (B).
- Apply David Allen’s two-minute rule: act immediately on anything that takes two minutes or less; categorize and archive the rest.
- Know the Outlook limits before committing: bulk archive breaks on large inboxes, there is no multiple-inbox view, and categories cannot be set from the compose window.
Episode details: published February 21, 2023 · 11:10 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Jeff Su’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.
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