<p>It's all too easy to let emails pile up and never get attended to. If you need a little more motivation acting on your emails quickly (say, if you want to stop being that unresponsive person who never returns messages), set up a filter and special inbox in Gmail that disappears as you read it.</p><p>This "empty Gmail hack" from Zen Habits blogger Leo Babauta was inspired by the Smart Unread Inbox (or "Schroedinger Smart Inbox" we featured before). Instead of instructions for Apple Mail, though, Leo offers the steps to set this up in Gmail: Clear out your inbox backlog first (with Email DMZ if you need to). Then create an "everything skips the inbox" filter and a new "Multiple Inbox" where all your unread emails will be sent.</p><p>Now when you open an unread message, you have to do something with it or else it will just disappear from that inboxmotivation for you to act on it right away (and, perhaps, not read emails until you're ready to process them):</p><p>The power of this is that you know a message will disappear after you read it, so you are motivated to act on it right away. You should therefore do one of these things:</p><p><a href="http://lifehacker.com/5972519/create-a-smart-unread-inbox-in-gmail-that-forces-you-to-take-action-on-each-message">Keep reading...</a></p>