If you haven’t watched Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero presentation, you should. Stop reading this and go watch it. I’ll see you in about an hour…
All done? Great. Here’s a quick tip for getting there, and staying there, much more easily within Apple’s Mail.app. All you need to do is create a simple Smart Mailbox &emdash; you do use smart mailboxes, right? &emdash; that includes messages from your inbox(es) which are unread. Then, use this as your inbox. Once a message is read and you close the window or navigate away, the message will no longer show up in your “unread” mailbox. If you can make it a habit to use this instead, you can just ignore the garbage piling up in your inbox, or periodically archive the whole mess.
Because the messages will go away automatically, you’ll need to act on them in some way the first time. If the message requires no response, this is as simple as moving on to the next message. If the message requires a response, respond. If the message requires further action, capture the action in whatever system you use for managing tasks. If your inbox is the system you use for managing tasks, smack yourself right now.