I’m a Gmail user. I used to carefully label any email I wanted to keep, using labels for each project. This kept my inbox clear if I did this frequently throughout the day. But if I got lazy or was returning from a long weekend, messages piled up and labeling became dreadful. Labels were helpful in finding a message if I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but otherwise provided little value.

I’ve ditched the labels.  As I go through my inbox, I deal with each message this way:

1. If it’s not worth keeping, I delete it.
2. If it’s worth keeping, but I don’t need to act on it, I archive it.
3. If it’s something I need to act on, I label it TODO.

The decision is simple and gets the inbox cleared quickly. I work through the TODO list, moving them to DONE when I’ve finished with them. It works out that when I need to refer to a message, I can find it quickly in TODO or DONE.

If a message sits in TODO for a long time, but I can’t bring myself to archive it, I move it to DEFER. It’s kind of pointless because I typically don’t do anything with these messages and they eventually get archived.

So far so good. I spend less time managing my inbox, I rarely miss important messages and I can find what I’m looking for quickly.