Working professionals spend, on average, 28% of their working day reading and answering emails, according to a McKinsey analysis. For the average full-time worker in America, that amounts to 2.6 hours and 120 messages per day.
Rahul Vohra is the CEO and founder of Superhuman, a subscription email app that promises a faster, streamlined experience. Superhuman is popular in Silicon Valley, counting execs from firms such as Slack, Spotify, and Dropbox among its clients.
Vohra is a two-time founder in Silicon Valley and has been figuring out how to make email better since 2010, when he launched Rapportive, an earlier version of Superhuman that sold to LinkedIn in 2012.
While working at LinkedIn, Vohra noticed that many professionals didn’t read most emails to save time, he said. So in 2014, Vohra launched Superhuman, raising a total of $33 million in funding over four rounds. In 2019, the email software quadruped its business and hit $20 million in revenues according to Forbes.
Read on to see Vohra’s five tips to boost email productivity and get to inbox zero.
Learn email keyboard shortcuts
It’s worth Googling for the most common email shortcuts for whatever software you use. Gmail and Outlook for example have a dedicated page dedicated to shortcuts. “You need to use an email client that has world-class keyboard shortcuts,” Vohra said.
Free software won’t have a vast range of shortcuts, but most have ways to quickly star, archive, and delete emails.
For example with Gmail, if you activate your keyboard shortcuts on ‘Settings’, you can press ‘r’ to reply to and email or ‘f’ to forward the email. But also, add CC recipients by pressing ⌘/Ctrl + Shift + c.
Use follow-up reminders
Instead of going through your inbox when needing to follow-up, check for a reminder or snooze icon