If you have a computer in your life, you probably have a love-hate relationship with email. Messages can arrive in the hundreds, cluttering your inbox and and your brain. Plus, when coworkers have seriously irksome email habits, it can make you want to throw your laptop out the window. A personalized process for email management can help.
As a generally organized person, seeing someone’s overflowing email inbox makes me squirm. If you’re one of those people with thousands of messages in their main inbox, spanning multiple years and phases of life, then this post probably isn’t up your alley. But I’d like to share my personal anxiety-reducing email management strategies for those of you who are like me. So if you love the idea of a organized inbox (and life!), this post is for you!
Why Inbox Zero Doesn’t Work
The term “Inbox Zero” is thrown around a lot in online productivity circles. Inbox Zero is the concept that your goal should always be an inbox with, well, zero emails. This sounds like an invitation for a mass delete, but it’s a bit more complex. It involves filing away every single email into categorized subfolders. Yes, that’s right — every single email.
While I like the idea of a clear inbox, I feel that Inbox Zero gives users a false sense of security. Some of those subfolders, for instance, will have names like “To Follow Up” or “Need to Reread”. This means that your beautiful empty inbox isn’t actually empty. You’ve simply put everything on the back burner to make yourself feel productive. And if, like me, you’re a bit forgetful, you can even lose track of those emails that actually still require some thought or work.
Further, Inbox Zero is too black and white for the average person, no matter how organized. A single message left sitting in the inbox could be considered an automatic failure. If you’re the kind of person to even attempt Inbox Zero as a strategy, you’d probably also find that all-or-nothing mentality very crippling. Whether it means obsessing over your email or giving up altogether, neither conclusion is particularly pleasant. I believe that organizational systems need to be practical and sustainable. After all, they’re only as good as the human beings using them.
My Personal Email Management System
I subscribe to a modified version of Inbox Zero that has a bit more flexibility. Firstly, I create folders for all relevant topics. I try to make my folders and subfolders as specific and descriptive as possible. This ensures that I can find everything I’m looking for.
The best approach is to try to create folders that are MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive). That way, every email you want to file away has one perfect folder in which to store it, and you’ll have no problem finding that email in the future. This can take some rework, especially when you are starting a new project or role and haven’t figured out its full scope yet. The closer you get, though, the easier you’ll find email management to be.
Once I have relevant folders, I sort my emails into them — but only when they’re “done”. I use the emails in my inbox as a checklist. If an email is still sitting in my inbox, that means I still have an open action item to complete. It might mean a physical task to be done, such as compiling a report or holding a meeting. But it also might simply mean following up for a reply on the thread. If I’m likely to forget about an email conversation, I’ll leave it in my inbox as a constant reminder until the issue is resolved.
The Unofficial Friday Night Rule
The risk with this method is leaving lots of “to do” items in your inbox. Suddenly you’re back where you started, with hundreds of emails piling up. I address this with a self-imposed rule that applies specifically to my Outlook inbox at work. Before I leave the office on Friday, I should be able to view all of my emails in one pane, without having to scroll down. Granted, I use Conversation View, so all emails on a single thread appear as one line. This means I have a maximum of around fifteen conversations or issues pending at any given time. When you’re fielding dozens or hundreds of emails a day, seeing everything reduced to a single screen is a massive relief.
For me, after a long day of completing and filing away emails, there’s no better feeling than seeing that scroll bar disappear.
Why Not Just Use Flags?
Lots of email clients, especially Gmail, put a heavier emphasis on flags. Flags are visual markers that can indicate priority, project, or category for the emails in your inbox. Maybe this is personal preference, but I find flags to be more akin to clutter than organization. Your field of view fills up with an assortment of colourful icons, and you don’t get the satisfaction of literally removing completed items from your sight.
If you like flags, feel free to utilize them in your email management system. They just aren’t my cup of tea.
Other Helpful Hints for Email Management
I’ve posted Outlook tips in the past — if you haven’t checked those out, I recommend it! They’re simple but effective methods to save you time and effort in Outlook.
One critical tip not included in that post is to use auto-filing. That is, you can create rules that automatically send certain emails into a folder other than your inbox. When I worked in Marketing Analytics, this was super critical. I received dozens of automated reports on a daily basis. But in most cases, they cluttered my inbox and distracted from the truly important emails I was receiving. Instead, I sent many of these reports to a designated “Daily Reports” folder. I could have all of these emails stored away for reference, without using up valuable time to file them all away. This technique can help with online courses or email subscriptions in your personal inbox as well.
I would love to hear your tips and tricks for email management! How do you conquer your inbox? Let me know in the comments below!
