I feel like Inbox Zero is mostly for people that receive massive quantities of email that they also have to act on.
For people like me who mostly receive updates and notifications via email and only occasionally receive actionable content through email it doesn't make sense to have some sort of superset of methods on top of what my email software already provides.
I read the stuff that's interesting to me, I pin things I need to take care of later or remember (I use Inbox), I reply to things that need replying to which typically only happens a handful of times per week, and that's that.
If I ever get to the point where I am pinning several emails per week and find that I have to act or reply on more than the handful of emails per week that I already do I will consider a method for staying on top of my inbox but until then the built-in tools already do it well enough for me.
Also I would start by looking into the tools themselves to see how they could help me, rather than inventing a set of rules for how to use my inbox. Filtering, bundles in Inbox, etc.
But hey, to each their own. I would get stressed out with an Inbox Zero mindset.
That's a good point. If E-mail is your RSS, then this might not work for you.
Part of it is definitely feeding into an urge to be an e-mail completionist (for me this has ended up with me unsubscribing from a _lot_ of email notifications), so there is an argument that IZ feeding into the obsessive parts of ourselves.
The whole "Getting Things Done" mindset is that you have to make a call on everything, so you have to act on it. Like if you get a promo coupon, you need to set some time to go browse the website if you're thinking of using it. Nothing takes 0 seconds, right?
It's the sort of stuff to apply if you feel like your time is being sapped away an you're not sure why. As one of those people, it's helped me a lot, so I recommend it because I know others out there are like that... but no point putting a Band-Aid where there's no problem right?
For people like me who mostly receive updates and notifications via email and only occasionally receive actionable content through email it doesn't make sense to have some sort of superset of methods on top of what my email software already provides.
I read the stuff that's interesting to me, I pin things I need to take care of later or remember (I use Inbox), I reply to things that need replying to which typically only happens a handful of times per week, and that's that.
If I ever get to the point where I am pinning several emails per week and find that I have to act or reply on more than the handful of emails per week that I already do I will consider a method for staying on top of my inbox but until then the built-in tools already do it well enough for me.
Also I would start by looking into the tools themselves to see how they could help me, rather than inventing a set of rules for how to use my inbox. Filtering, bundles in Inbox, etc.
But hey, to each their own. I would get stressed out with an Inbox Zero mindset.