August 30, 2006—
Dealing with emails can be a nightmare, especially when you have hundreds of unread emails which keep growing by the hour, and dozens of flagged messages which need following-up on. Here are a few simple actions you can take to clear that inbox.
6.
Change your mail checking preference to 15 or 30 minute intervals. Do not stop work to answer emails as they arrive, instead set aside time each hour to briefly deal with your incoming emails.
5.
Create 3 folders and name them Follow-Up, Interesting & To Do. Then, as you check your emails file them straight into the applicable folder.
Later, when you have time you can go straight to these folders folder and work through them. It will be much quicker to see what needs attending to and you are more likely to might be motivated to spare a few minutes clearing your to-do folder.
4.
Organization is the key to accessing any saved emails. Having 2000 emails in one folder is a sure-fire road map to confusion and lost information.
Create folders, then subfolders residing inside these. For example for this blog I have this folder structure set up in Mail:
Do this for each different project you are working on, and as you get a related email file it right away. If it needs to be followed up move it into that folder, then to it's normal resting place once it's been actioned.
3.
Keep your inbox clear, do not be tempted to use it as a storage box. Each evening before you log off the computer make sure there is nothing left in your inbox. Go through each and every email and file it. Place it in its respective folder, or if it requires actioning put it in your Follow-Up, Interesting or To Do folders.
This allows you to start the next day fresh and organized.
2.
Get that delete button working. Sit down for an hour (or however long it takes) and sort through every single email in Mail. Press Delete on anything you will never need again. After this long deleting session it should be a lot easier to keep on top of the size of your Mail database.
Searching will be faster, and finding files will be more efficient.
1.
Receiving hundreds of emails each day? Filters, otherwise known as "Smart Folders", are your answer.
Let's say you run three blogs, create three smart folders with the rules:
This way you can keep different type of email in different places, and will have no confusion on what the email is related to.
There are 17 comments. Make a comment.
racketboy said on August 30, 2006—
"Create 3 folders and name them Follow-Up, Interesting & To Do. Then, as you check your emails file them straight into the applicable folder."
Simple, but a very good idea. Thanks!
Brajeshwar said on August 31, 2006—
6. Well, I'd still keep it to 5 but changed my habit to check it only after my work is done. This may be useful initially to break your habit though. 5. I have "Smart Folder" for these which are like "Flagged" for the ones that I flagged and these are ones that I will follow up and interesting, then I have "Unread" for all unread mails that comes in so I can check all unread mails (for all my mail account) at one go. 4. Mine is a mixed blend of Smart Folders and Normal Folder with appropriate Filters. Some filters even "Mark them Read" and shoved off in the folder – for the likes of the SVN and Trac notifications of our deve team are just there so I can scan them when I like. Btw, MailActOn would be a good tool to have here for this one (it is free and is availabel at http://www.indev.ca/MailActOn.html). 3. I use to have my Outlook to do automatic Archives every 7 days and use to separate archives every 6 months when I was on Windows but have been looking every since I converted to Mac that can do an archive for my Mail but still keeps it for me to look for whenever I want. Any idea? 2. I would rather NEVER delete mails save for Spams but I have talked to people who even loves to collect spams mails and just keep it. What about using Gmail as your Mail Archiver. Read a relevant Article I wrote today – http://www.brajeshwar.com/archives/2006/08/is-gmail-the-best-spam-filter-for-your-domain/ 1. As mentioned above, the answer is the usage of both "Smart Folders" and Normal Folder with Filters appropriately.
Caitlyn Imburgo said on August 31, 2006—
I think this could have been done in "3 Ways to Organize" but interesting ideas. :)
Gavin said on September 1, 2006—
Thanks for the tips. I'll try a few out and see if it helps me get organized. I've got to seriously take some time and tweak my Thunderbird settings but I never seem to get around to it. Maybe now is as good a time as any.
Fapper said on September 1, 2006—
Wait man, Wait a second. A friend referred me to this article about organizing mail with things called folders!? I don't really understand the concept. Why would you put things into folders?
Seriously, you need to rethink things. If you're going to write something for the public to read (obviously) then you might want to make it understandable. This simply makes no sense.
Brandon Wood said on September 1, 2006—
Thanks for the tips Glenn. #6 is my worst offense, especially at work. I tend to stop whatever it is I'm doing when an email arrives so that I can tend to it. What I should really do is turn off the notification that pops up on my desktop every time a new email arrives. If I'm not instantly notified when a new email arrives, I won't feel bad about neglecting it for 15 or 20 minutes until I finish what I'm working on.
Michael Madrinan said on September 1, 2006—
Nice tips. I do something similar but not exactly like that. I actually group my mails into separate sub-folders per project instead of the aforementioned Todo, Interesting, and Follow-up groupings. To actually track what I need to do and what I need to follow-up, I flag them using different coloured flags in outlook (say Red Flag for To do, Blue Flag for Important Info, Green for Follow-up, and so on). I then setup search folders pertaining to each of the flags…
Then when I'm done with the task, I just mark the flag as complete.
This way, I can keep track of all the info for specific project, but then be able to track my To Dos.
Note that I also assign myself tasks by sending blank e-mails to myself either from my Office PC or via my phone if something comes up while I'm away from my desk.
Richard said on September 1, 2006—
I was about to add such labels to Gmail, and I realized that I largely use the "starred" feature for all three. I try to keep my inbox to one page (50, for me) of conversations so a smallish list of stars is fine. Also, I have 2 gmail accounts – standard, and list/public, that I use for list discussions etc. This keeps my private one quiet – I don't even see the other account until I make a specific effort to look at that account – and I use IE for that (Firefox on the standard one) so I can auto-login to both.
I also find that using Gmail exclusively means I don't keep my email open – I only open it every 30 minutes or so – which is much better than my old Thunderbird/Outlook behaviour!
Jim Puls said on September 1, 2006—
I know that it's bad form to just dump a link in an article's comments, but I wrote up a response to this on my site: http://www.nondifferentiable.com/2006/08/31/about-those-mail-folders/
PKtm said on September 1, 2006—
Nope. Why spend all that time sorting out e-mail? Sure, for some things, it's worthwhile. But for most, my advice is LEAVE it in the inbox, and use quality search tools when you need to find something. And "set time aside each hour"??! I don't live in a world like that.
jumper said on September 1, 2006—
in my experience, sorting/viewing your mail by "conversation" instead of date/sender helps tremendously! it "lessens" the number of items in your inbox and makes it easy to look for related/relevant emails.
Gmail, which i use, sorts emails automatically by conversation. and i agree with some of the people here, that the "Starred" function is very useful. i use it as my "to do" list. whenever i see an important email, i "star" it. whenever i wanna see my "to do list", i just click on my "Starred" emails.
Paul L said on September 1, 2006—
Some good points but you failed to deal with the most insideously ignored folder of all – Sent Items. As an admin, it is inevitable the one that fills a mailbox as noone sorts it.
Paul L said on September 1, 2006—
With Thunderbird I use the Inbox as the Sent folder and view it threaded. That way when a discussion is complete, I can file or delete the whole list of emails. I can even pare the thread down to the 1 or 2 most important, as all of the replies inevitably have a copy of the originals.
I also tend to apply labels to emails to set as todo and followup instead of seperate folders.
z said on September 1, 2006—
one more tip (i use it on my gmail account, but it should apply to other email systems as well).
i send all my news subscriptions as well as any perishable emails directly to trash. whenever i have time, thats where i read them. and if i never do, they get quietly deleted.
Mikey said on September 1, 2006—
There is some really good advice here, I will have to try it out and see how it goes. Thanks Glenn!
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