Technocom Blog

Outlook Inbox Organization

Article posted by Jeff Perks on Monday, March, 16th, 2009 at 1:04 pm

If your main job is to correspond all day via email, stop reading this blog. It’s not for you… 

I get way too many emails in a day. Sometimes it’s hard to keep myself focused on what really NEEDS to be done, and what is just wasting my time. There, I said it. 

I’ve tried every method out there from creating sub folders with rules for incoming mail, to using the “flag” strategy. Even if I archived my emails every 6 months, I still always seemed to end up with 10,000 emails in my inbox at any one time. I’m not a pack rat by nature, but it seemed like every time I deleted something… a business journal email, a confirmation of some type, etc, I would undoubtedly want to look at it again the next day. 

I finally came across a couple of articles that seem to have solved the problem (or at least eased the pain a little). After using this system for about 3 months now, I rarely have more than 30 emails in my inbox. 

I created a folder that I named “Archive” right in my main mailbox tree. All emails that I open that I don’t need to respond to, I drag into this folder. That way, it’s there if I need to go back to it. Also, that folder along with my “Sent Items” folder, are what I will archive every 6 months. (I actually changed the name of the folder later from “Archive” to “Old Items”, because sometimes I accidentally dragged emails into my “Deleted Items”, folder which was right below it. Sometimes now I drag stuff into my “Outbox” though… I need a new idea for that one.) 

Next, I created a folder that I called “Save”. I use this folder for things like passwords, vendor account info, instructions for setting up my VPN, our FTP server address, and other stuff that I use just often enough that I don’t want to have to search too hard to find it. 

All other emails that come in I address immediately, in the order I received them. It can be difficult at first, because the tendency is to do the easy stuff first, and then do the more time-consuming things later. The problem is, “later” sometimes never comes… So my general rule is, unless it’s something that will take more than an hour or so to do, do it now (even if it means asking for clarification or delegating). I created a folder named “To Do” for those emails that I couldn’t take care of in an hour. 

Also, if your job permits it, turn off your notification of new emails. I don’t think I have to remind anyone how distracting it is to be working on a project and have that box pop up telling you that you have a new message. Personally, 90% of the time I find myself stopping what I am doing to read it. 

The trick is to keep as few items in your inbox as possible. Set a schedule for checking your email. That could be twice an hour, or twice a day, depending on your business and job duties. Then, DO SOMETHING with each email as you get done opening it. 

How do you keep your inbox clean? Any suggestions? 

 

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