Forget Inbox Zero, Try GO — SLOW — NO Instead

Rachel Wendte
3 min readJun 23, 2021

Inbox Zero. The practice that productivity gurus swear by. The habit that many say you must adopt in order to be successful. I applaud the people who are dedicated to the system and find that it helps them. But for me, it’s always been a source of anxiety rather than an achievable goal.

So I created something different. My ultimate, not at all patented, but highly effective email system. This is the GO — SLOW — NO Method.

My stoplight approach to email: GO, SLOW, or NO

I’m never going to be a person that has enough folders, labels, and tags to get my inbox down to nothing. Rather than beat myself up, I’ve come up with a way to organize my emails on a broad level. And then I start to label and categorize further. These stoplight buckets come first.

Emails that fall in the GO category

GO emails are those where I would get in trouble if I did not answer them. Put another way, GO emails require a prompt response, some action on my part, or both.

GO emails are also the ones that might not need action from me right now, but will in the future. I keep these messages in the GO inbox so that as things develop, I can refer back to previous conversations quickly.

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Rachel Wendte
Rachel Wendte

Written by Rachel Wendte

Arts & culture enthusiast who loves all things creative, media related, and cleverly debated. #UXDesigner and Tutor @CareerFoundry.

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