Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

The Happy Inbox: How to Have a Stress-Free Relationship with Your Email and Overcome Your Communication Clutter

Rate this book
Get ready to learn how to conquer the distractions caused by information and communication overload, and how to get out from under "communication clutter," so you can live a life of choice―one of action, not reaction.

Feeling buried by communication clutter is that it's that state of feeling like you are always owing return communication to someone. It's the subtle sense of anxiety caused by your backlog of email, taunting you with the little red indicators on the communication apps on your phone―texts, voicemails, missed calls, social media notifications―plus the mountain of outstanding email piling up in your inbox even as you read this.

Want to live free of that feeling?! Get ready to dive in and live free of communication clutter! Positive results include:
Reduced anxiety caused by digital and paper clutter.
An ability to retrieve information you need quickly.
The opportunity to spend less time managing communication clutter and more time working toward your goals!

152 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 1, 2021

26 people are currently reading
102 people want to read

About the author

Maura Thomas

8 books9 followers

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
15 (10%)
4 stars
40 (28%)
3 stars
63 (45%)
2 stars
21 (15%)
1 star
1 (<1%)
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
162 reviews6 followers
November 9, 2021
First, thank you very much to Sourcebooks for the arc of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This was a VERY short, very quick read. While I think that's a good thing (because honestly, how much can you read about email?), I would probably not have been thrilled if I paid $16.99 for this book. I think it would be perfect for large corporations to buy in bulk and hand out to their staff to read over. I do think that applying the tips in this book will absolutely result in increased productivity. I did learn some tips that I plan to implement and am excited to see how much they help me increase productivity and have a smoother workflow.

One thing mentioned in the book that I loved is that your inbox is meant to be a place to receive emails, NOT to be used for email storage. I think many of us are guilty of using it for storage, for things we plan to get to later, etc.

The book is small in size and not very long, and even so, it was filled with plenty of full page photos and there was an entire section on meetings, which seemed like it was there as a filler more than anything else. So just know that if you order this book, you will read it in a sitting.

Again, there were definitely some useful tips, but I feel that it could've been summed up into an article with numbered actions steps/tips. That said, for a company to buy these in bulk for their staff, I think something short, sweet, and easy to read was the right way to go. It is going to be the best thing to get people to actually read it and stay engaged with the material. I really do think it is well-suited for the workplace and could be handed out to entire departments (or really anyone that handles an email account at their job). So while this book absolutely has it's place, if you are a casual reader, it may not be what you are expecting.
2 reviews
August 2, 2022
useful information

This book has given me some insight into being better organized and in being a better meeting organizer, I am looking forward to reading other books in this series
Profile Image for M Aghazarian.
592 reviews11 followers
March 30, 2022
Concise, to the point, useful. I will be checking out her other books
Profile Image for Ilana.
1,059 reviews
August 17, 2022
My Inbox is rarely having less than 20 ´unread´ messages. All round the clock I am regularly bombarded with news of all kinds, from highly emergency clients, rescheduled meetings or some unexpected friendly mail from friends I haven´t been in touch for years. At the same time, my WhatsApp is rarely sleeping, as my contacts are spread all over the world, operating mostly - as I do - on a full schedule. My secret to ´normality´ is being multi-tasking and over-active therefore, answering various requests or formulating myself some is never exhausting. It is part of my everyday pace.

However, I know that my personal life is suffering sometimes, I don´t remember how many times my son mentioned that I am with my head deep into my phone - for a few seconds though, that for him feel like hours. In any case, I need a better time management not in the detriment of my personal life, but by finding ways to save it. For instance, feeling self-aware - of indifferent, depending of your priority lists - enough to refuse answering that client who is bombarding me with various kind of rhetorical requests between 7am and 10 am on a holy Saturday morning...

Thus, my interest for a book like The Happy Inbox. How to Have a Stress-Free Relationship with your Email and Overcome your Communication Clutter by motivational speaker and productivity expert Maura Thomas.

The book is short and concise, therefore can be easily read in-between commuting or while waiting a late meeting to (finally) start. It has important tips about how to set up filters that may automatically select the important from the non-important emails. It also recommends, among others, using a separate email for newsletters and other time-consuming messages that can be read in your spare time as well.

More than a time management tool for your inbox, it does recommend also a couple of measures to be taken while preparing a meeting, including by trying to get to know the participants and their eventual mindset, and also being ready for the delays or how to further send information to the absent members of the team.

Personally, I would have expect more focus on the emails only, including by mentioning the pros and cons of using various emails - Yahoo vs. Google etc. - or a step-by-step guide about how to actually organise your time in a way that avoids getting overloaded and in the end, burned out. However, for a medium cluttered email and a mild overburned hard working employee or freelancer, the book do include enough tips to get you started into the next steps of a better work-life balance.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the editor in exchange for an honest review
15 reviews
October 15, 2024
This book is a great read and is condensed with good knowledge! Although some should be common knowledge, we should all agree that those get tossed aside because we never have it written out for those who don't know or forgot.

I had to put the book down immediately after reading the section on cleaning up your inbox and having it set up to default clean itself so I could implement it and see what all I can do in the short time I had prior to work and already it is cleaning itself up!

I have seen a bit of push back in other reviews about what is recommended as steps to fix these and I can't help but wonder "why?" Even though I rarely use my primary email for anything important, the thought of waking up and not seeing half of my screen taken up by new promotional emails from my guilty pleasures (fast food, non-essential shopping, etc...) gives me a lot more joy and energy! And now that I am seeing the amount reduce slowly from the thousands of unread messages, heading closer and closer to that empty inbox, I feel a lot more relived!

Certainly recommend for people to read and decide if it is useful for their circumstance, though I STRONGLY recommend keeping an open mind for this. Push aside whatever strategies you have used or been using, because the fact you are interested in this book shows you know deep down it isn't working. So don't knock it 'til you try it! Happy reading!
Profile Image for Avi Poje.
129 reviews
May 8, 2025
While The Happy Inbox presented some solid basics for approaching work email, the advice wasn’t anything revelatory. The most useful tip was to set rules to handle what she calls Wanted Robomail. However, she didn’t address the more fundamental problem head-on, that an overload of email causes a major slowdown of getting results for projects that matter. Setting aside enough time to handle email is fine, but it can meet a certain threshold where it becomes unsustainable to maintain Inbox Zero (which she advocates for without calling it that).

The second half of this very short book didn’t focus on email at all. While providing basic, good advice on meetings, it felt off-topic given why I was reading the book and what the book’s title is.
Profile Image for Jane Dennish.
1,403 reviews11 followers
November 13, 2021
I read this book in about 30-40 minutes tops. It gives good suggestions for those who have a never ending inbox of emails. It also gives good suggestions and reminders for those who are organized but don’t have time to read them! Thanks to Sourcebooks for a gifted copy in exchange for an honest review!
Profile Image for Sadie-Jane Huff.
1,837 reviews11 followers
December 4, 2021
🌟🌟💫
I liked that it was concise.
But honestly, I didn't get anything new with this one.
The one thing that I cannot help but wonder is given that people are working beyond traditional 9 to 5 hours ever since WFH... how does this apply then?
It felt like a lot of it would happen in an ideal world to a certain extent...
Profile Image for Julie.
41 reviews2 followers
November 16, 2022
Quick read with some good pointers I'll consider for filtering the email inbox, though there was one conflicting thought: Filter your email (one section), but don't categorize (under "don't do this")?
Profile Image for Elizabeth Gray.
3 reviews1 follower
January 23, 2023
Super quick read. I think the principles are great. This would’ve helped me as someone new to a corporate world. I am glad I read it. But I would’ve been bummed to pay $16.99 for that little of tips to actually help. I’m super glad my library had it for me to borrow.
2 reviews
January 2, 2022
Quick. Easy read. Some things in this book are self explanatory, but overall a very good book for a manager to hand a staff.

Informative, quick, all you can ask for from a book like this
Profile Image for Neha Shaah.
29 reviews
June 23, 2022
Quick read. It was for me a checklist of things I can do to be more productive... Most things were known
Profile Image for Jules.
260 reviews72 followers
December 14, 2022
Good book for a graduate just starting the workforce but overall not as helpful for someone intuitive and naturally organized with several years of experience to draw from.
Profile Image for Amy.
139 reviews
April 29, 2023
Useful knowledge to help with managing inboxes. Seems like a some common themes in any of the books on the topic but I’m thankful for anything to help.
Profile Image for Rachel B .
517 reviews10 followers
May 7, 2023
Quick read; excellent reminder to work smarter—and to stop letting your inbox dictate your days.
Profile Image for Hillary.
98 reviews3 followers
March 30, 2025
Audiobook. Ok. Mostly commons sense, but some good reminders on best practices and strategies.
Profile Image for Ashley.
126 reviews1 follower
October 7, 2023
I read all three books in the series and I loved them all. These books are short, which I really appreciate. I hate when time-management books linger on and on. Although this book is short, there are actionable takeaways. Also, the length made it easier to read and implement.

I gave 5 stars because I felt the items were do-able. Sure, some items I've heard before but there are others that I haven't.
Profile Image for Dara.
1,691 reviews55 followers
March 28, 2022
This book was not quite what I expected it to be as it was geared towards corporate life or professionals who are chained to their email – maybe like my husband! I did talk to him about some of the things mentioned in this book and he agreed. Some of the advice in this book includes how to compose emails to get the most useful replies, managing time, and strangely enough, how to have a productive meeting. The section about meetings surprised me, since I thought the book was about emails! Also, the author offers further information if you go to her website, where sure enough, she asks you to sign up for…more emails.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.