5 Tips that Could Make Your Email Inbox a Manageable Oasis
Would you believe that business professionals send and receive an average of 120 – 300 emails per day? With so many messages going in and out, low-priority and redundant conversation messages can pile up in your inbox pretty quickly. So what happens when your boss urgently needs you to resend an email chain from a month ago and your inbox is littered with 2,500 emails? Going through all of that clutter can be a challenge and even if you find what you’re looking for, just looking at your crowded inbox can cause anxiety.
Most of our poor email habits have been built over time and it can take a lot of personal accountability to break them. The truth is that it’s easier for people to adopt poor habits than it is to develop good ones, so to help free you from the clutter that pollutes our inbox, here are some great tips to keep your email manageable:
• Decide and delete daily. Make a rapid decision about each incoming email. It should quickly fit into one of three mental categories as soon as you read it: “Need to respond,” “should file,” or “delete.” You don’t need to respond to every email you receive.
• The monthly zap. Sit down at the end of each month and delete the emails you sent during that month. You’ll be surprised how satisfying it can feel.
• Cut email in half. Of the hundreds of emails received each day, roughly half require no response from me at all. They usually get deleted right after reading them and commit the salient points to memory. Of the remaining half, most are responded to within 24 hours. To avoid redundancies, if I’m following a long, multi-email chain, only keeping the last email in the thread and ruthlessly delete the ones that came before it.
• Be a power filer. Anything that is not urgent can be looked at later, but if it’s not filed, you’ll never do it. My strategy is to be “power filer.” For instance, my “to read” folder contains links and articles that will take more than one minute to review. They’re not urgent, but they are important. I save these to be read on planes when I’m traveling on business. I also have a “how-to” folder to immediately file anything that has to do with instructions (how to request a vacation, how to open a PO, how to upload a performance review, etc.) so I don’t spend any time looking for things that should really take no time.
• Chop the block. Some people swear that the key to email management is to only check email during specific times of the day. While that seems like a workable strategy for anyone whose email may not contain an urgent question, problem or decision point, many of us don’t have that luxury. Many of our responsibilities include management of a cross-functional, global team who may need counsel or a decision on a moment’s notice. Try checking email throughout the day at your desk or phone.
Remember, an easily manageable inbox – one that is organized and free of clutter – can be any user’s personal oasis, so use these tips to help manage your inbox and enjoy your new found bliss.
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