Hi! I’m Deb, one of the Zapier blog editors. I’m just coming off more than 48 hours without power from the hurricane, and my inbox is beyond full. I’m an inbox zero person, so it’s...overwhelming.

But I’ve thought a lot about how to manage my emails. First, I make sure I spend no more than five minutes on any given email. It’s mostly about the mindset, but using things like canned responses and text expanders also helps. I also automate my inbox with filters. 

One trick I started using recently relies on a Zap: I star any email that requires more than a quick response, and it turns it into a task on my to-do list. That lets me archive the email, get to inbox zero more quickly, but still be sure to respond later. Here’s an article I wrote on our blog explaining it a bit more.

Why you should respond to emails—and how to make yourself do it

We also just released a Gmail add-on that lets you do stuff like this on a one-off basis. Check it out.

Do you have any tricks for automating your inbox? Let me know in the comments!