Imagine your mail being delivered to your door and you come home, glance at the envelopes to see who sent them, and then leave them at the door in a pile. Then you continue to do this every day, and the days stretch into weeks and months — perhaps even years. How would you feel coming home to this mounting pile at your door every day? A bit overwhelming, isn’t it? Many of you face this scenario every day, but instead of your physical mail, it is in the form of your email. Consider adopting the following tips for organizing your email clutter.
Create Folders
By creating folders in your inbox, you automatically sort your incoming mail into categories. This will reduce email clutter and allow you to increase your productivity. You will be able to focus on one category at a time.
Create Rules
Rules divert incoming email into designated folders according to who sent them or other criteria appropriate to a specific project or subject. This option is handy for newsletters that you subscribe to and want to keep in a folder to read later. It will prevent email clutter in your inbox.
Flag Emails
By adding flags to emails, you can remember follow-up on actions. You can select actions like Follow up, Read, or Reply. You can also set a “Date Due” option so that you know when the action must be completed.
Chu’sing a Solution…
Most email programs automatically sort folders alphabetically from A to Z. What if you wanted the folder named ‘Important Project’ to be at the top of the list and not after the H folders? There is a simple trick I use quite often. Using a typographical symbol or number as the first character in the name will cause it to be first in the order. Naming the file ‘!mportant Project’ will ensure it is at the top of the list. If you have several projects, consider using numbering them according to priority such as 01-Project, 02-Project, and so on.
If you need help streamlining your workplace for success, contact us, to discuss how we can help.
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Creating rules is the best thing I have done to make my business run more efficiently. It allows me to stay on top of important projects and has reduced the amount of time wasted on email. I get all my clients to follow the email system Linda has outlined here – they all see immediate results on revenue once they do.
Wow, you must be telepathic! I am experiencing all that you just said…and more. Thank you for the tips. I’m will try to follow your instructions but might have to call upon your services if I get overwhelmed and crazy over it. I’ll try first, though. But thank you. I’ll add it to my To Do list and see if I get to it very soon. I love receiving your newsletter and yours will be the first one I create a new folder for.
Thanks for caring and sharing!
Interesting article, i have bookmarked your site for future referrence 🙂
Great to see that Organizing Your Emails has given you some information to tackle your inbox. Just like may not scroll to the 2nd or 3rd page when you do a search in Google, one usually does not scroll through the pages of pages of email they have collected in their inbox. Let me know if you need a kick-start. Linda