Thread by @page_gould

@jayvanbavel Last year, advice on Twitter helped me develop a system that's worked for me since January 2019!

Step 1: Setup
1.1. Move all emails currently in your Inbox into a new "Old" folder
1.2. Set email to only check for new mail manually
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@jayvanbavel 1.3. Identify two 30-minute blocks in your calendar when you will check email, ideally where the first block is at or after noon
1.4. Get some to-do list method, be it software (wunderlist.com, omnigroup.com/omnifocus/), stickies on a wall, or whatever
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@jayvanbavel Step 2: Daily Maintenance
When you scheduled email checks in your calendar:
2.1. Open your email and check for new mail (since you set it to only check manually)
2.2. From the oldest forward, try to answer each email in 2 minutes or less. If you can't, make a to-do list item.
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@jayvanbavel (Cont) 2.2. Sometimes, reply to the person to let them know when you will get to what they requested.
2.3. Do this until all the emails are gone. This usually takes less than 30 minutes X 2 blocks, if you have only about 30 emails that you REALLY need to answer in a day.

@jayvanbavel This has worked for me for a while. It also serves the purpose of supporting ONE to-do list (i.e., the email Inbox is not a second to-do list).

Also, making canned responses (e.g., "I got this email and will respond XX") makes it much easier to write emails ≤ 2 minutes.