Email is a very useful, powerful tool. Like a chainsaw. It's definitely more common; I no longer have a chainsaw, but I have four email addresses. And like a chainsaw, it's all too easy for email to get out of hand, and the results are not pretty.
There are entire workshops, lectures, books and consultancies built around email productivity, so today we're just going to touch on the basics: climbing out of your overstuffed inbox.
My mentor, Barbara Hemphill, once told me that the average inbox of a corporate worker has almost 2,000 messages in it. At first, I didn't believe her. Then I had occasion to visit a woman who had 1200 emails in her inbox, and I started to think Barbara probably had it right, as usual.
Here's the thing: you cannot manage 1200 items if they're all in one big open place. I watched the woman I was visiting scroll down screen after screen of inbox, trying to find one email that had been sent to her a week before. It was like watching someone look for a needle in a haystack—and given the proportions of 1 desired item to 1200 potential items, I mean that analogy quite literally.
The good news is that there are plenty of options to reduce your inbox size and help you handle incoming emails. One of my favorite tools for Outlook on the PC (sorry, Mac users) is Orla. It applies an expanded version of the file/act/toss sytem to email, which is a powerful step unto itself. But the main benefit of Orla is that it keeps you focused on your tasks and your calendar instead of your inbox.
If you can't use Orla (or don't want to add any software to your existing email client), then you know the system I'm about to recommend. It's a modified version of our paper filing system, and it applies just fine to email. Say it with me: "You can only do three things to an email: file it, act on it or toss it."
Start at the top of your inbox (because the most recent stuff tends to be the most relevant), and work your way down. If you can delete an email, by all means, do so. If you can act on that email in 30 seconds or less (reply, forward, call someone, etc.), by all means, do so.
But what about the emails that you need to act on but that action will take longer than 30 seconds? Like we do with paper items, we schedule a time to deal with them. Right-clicking on an email will yield all kinds of options including "Create a Task." This will make you set aside a time to deal with that email, and keep you focused on what needs doing, not the messages in your inbox.
And what about the emails you don't need to act on but want to keep around? As we've done with paper, we create Action folders and Reference folders. Action folders can be organized by project (again, a right-click will enable a project to be started), by type of action required or by category. And reference folders can be organized by project and category as well.
If you're using a web-based email client, you can still create folders, as I've done in the Hotmail inbox below. (Note that the inbox has 6 messages in it. Much easier to navigate than 1200!)
Like I said, email organization is a major topic unto itself. But I hope the tips in today's post at least help you get started in turning your inbox from an overgrown morass of messages into a useful tool.
If you have any tips of your own, don't hesitate to share them in the comments!
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