As knowledge workers, the majority of our time is spent sifting through our email inbox, which keeps on growing with no end in sight. It is time for effective email management to dig us through this vicious cycle. It is time for Inbox Zero strategy.
With this in mind, I’ve put together this ultimate guide to effect email management. These tips will save you countless hours and get you on the road of unlocking your productivity potential.
These ideas have been inspired from various productivity books, including How to Become A Productivity Ninja by Graham Allcott and The 15-Minute Inbox by Joost Woosters. I’ve been using these tips personally and I can vouch wholeheartedly that they work! Let’s dive right in.
Credit: Muhammad Ribkah, Pixabay
Table of Contents
I. Mindset Shift For Inbox Zero
There are four mindset changes required to implement this system:
- Your Inbox is Just a Place Where Emails Land
Your inbox is not your to-do list. Often people let emails pile up in their inbox because they use it like a to-do list and reminders. But that’s an issue as this can cause chaos as it can be difficult to know what is to do versus what is happening versus what can be ignored.
Instead, recognize that to be effective in email management, the email has to be either actioned, replied, something read and filed, or deleted.
- Don’t Spend All Day on Your Inbox
Checking your inbox too often can really impact your productivity. Turn off notifications and sound. This way you can revisit the inbox when you’re ready to review emails.
- Process Your Emails
Every time you open your inbox, your mindset should be not to check what’s new but to make decisions as to where to move the emails to.
- Regular Review
Make time to follow up, clean up, and do housekeeping on your email system.
II. Recognize Actions To Take On Any Email
There are four possible things you can do with every single email that arrives:
- Delete it, or file it away
- Deal with it (if less than a two-minute action, automatically do it then and there)
- Defer it
- Delegate it
Understanding this concept should give you a sense of relief. Your job is to decide how to process the emails into one of these four buckets. Do not delay the decision. Be ruthless and get it done.
III. The 800-20 Rule
This is a modification of the Pareto’s 80-20 Rule. 20% of your emails will add 80% of the possible impact through your use of emails. No more than 20% of emails you receive will be actionable. This means for every 800 emails you have, there will be 20 emails that require any significant action.
The rest are low priority emails that can be deleted, archived, or responded in less than two minutes. The reason is people tend to use cc or reply all button or adding you as FYI. Most likely the majority of the emails are part of the same conversation that can be dealt with together.
Temporary Backlog Folder
If you don’t believe this then think back on the times where you have fallen into an email jail and felt like you were drowning. In these situations, take all the older emails and put them in a new temporary folder. Call this folder holiday or backlog.
Once you start processing your backlog folder, you’ll realize most of these emails can be deleted. The reason the temporary folder approach works better is that you will be able to isolate the backlog – it is not going to grow bigger.
Sort through emails using one of the following approaches:
- Sort by subject – This will easily let you deal with emails in the same conversation. Once you address the last email, you will be able to delete or archive the email.
- Sort by sender – This approach also allows you to get rid of a big chunk at a time by handling the last email.
- Sort by date – Maybe you can easily delete emails that are before a certain time period. Is there any point of keeping emails that are from three months ago? There is likely no action on these so go ahead and delete or archive them. If there is an action on them, the sender will resend it.
IV. The Three Main Spaces In Your Email Inbox
We’re going to separate the inbox into three main spaces:
- The processing folders – where live work is kept
- The reference library – where emails we’ve dealt with are kept in case we need them in future. These emails should be archived.
- The main inbox space – where new emails land
Create three folders in your inbox:
Inbox Space 1: The Processing Folders
1. ACTION
2. FOLLOW UP
3. READ
The reason there are numbers in front of the folders is that most inboxes will alphabetize the folders by their name. In order to sort the folders by your preference, use sequential numbers. The names of these folders are flexible but you should be clear to the purpose of these folders.
1. ACTION FOLDER
Using this system, make action folder the main workspace that you work on. This includes everything you’re actually working on.
What goes in the Action Folder
- Any email that you’ve received where a reply or action is needed and it will take longer than two minutes.
What doesn’t belong in Action Folder?
- Any email where the response is a non-email related action, such as the email prompts you to call someone, look into something, raise at a meeting, or schedule a reminder, or add to a to-do list
- Any emails that can be replied to or dealt within less than two minutes.
- Any email where you are not sure what the action is. Put it back in your inbox.
2. FOLLOW UP OR WAITING FOLDER
This folder is to hold items where you’re waiting on others to action things. These will serve as a reminder that you’re waiting on someone else to do something. Review these once a week to spend few minutes to follow up with people, and delete those which have been actioned.
What goes in the Follow Up folder?
- Any emails where you’re waiting on someone else to do something.
- Emails that you have sent that you would like to track in this way.
What doesn’t belong in the Follow Up folder?
- Anything where you’re not clear on who or what you’re waiting on
You can include the items that you’re waiting on your calendar or a to do app to remind you so you don’t miss to action items that you’re waiting on others to action.
3. READ OR FYI FOLDER
The majority of emails you will receive will be updates or FYI without any action needed, such as internal memos, briefings etc. These kind of emails can be filed in this folder.
What goes in the Read folder?
- Anything that you want to scan at a later stage rather than read as soon as it lands in your inbox.
What doesn’t belong in the Read folder?
- Anything where you know there’s an action to perform. These will need to go to Action folder.
- Anything that can be read and then either deleted or filed in less than two minutes.
- Any emails you don’t know whether you need to read or not.
This folder gives you the opportunity to save for reading for quieter periods and periods of inactive attention. Return once a week to this folder so you can speed read.
Inbox Space 2: The Reference Folders
Once you have actioned emails, you can archive emails so you can refer back to them when needed. Avoid filings things into folders. It is too time consuming.
Inbox Space 3: The Main Inbox Space
Once you have implemented this system, the inbox only serves one function – it’s the place where new emails land and wait to be organized.
Apply the one touch rule to make sure that once opened, an email is never closed and put back in your inbox pending procrastination.
V. How to Spend The Time You Will Regain After Putting This Email Management System In Place
After putting an email management system in place, you will get your precious time back. If you wonder what to do with your time, then read this article next on how to spend your time.
It is time to focus on your priorities rather than other people’s priorities. It is time to take back control and achieve your dreams.
Conclusion
A healthy email management system will go a long way to make you more productive and happy. Having a well-defined system in place to manage emails and monitor action items may greatly reduce stress and boost efficiency.
There are several other tips that can be used for effective email management. We’ll include other strategies in the future posts in this series. Until next time!
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