Day after day we get more and more e-mails. Day after day it becomes harder to go through gigabytes of our inboxes just to find the very e-mail we’re looking for. Day after day we spend more time just looking for information which is “somewhere there.”
Well organized inbox is an answer here, but what exactly does it mean? I follow several simple rules:
• As little folders as it’s possible. For me it means three: sent items, deleted and inbox. I always know where I should look for the specific e-mail. I used to sort items basing on groups they were addressed to but I ended up crawling through multiple folders wondering where I could find that darn thing. This rule doesn’t apply to automatically generated e-mails form different systems, especially alerts from bugtracker, CMS etc.
• Copy instead of move. When I brake a rule above and create a folder for special occasion, e.g. for very important project or to store all crucial information from our administrators or papers from candidates applying for job I always copy mails to the folder instead of moving. It allows me to find it later with my standard search mechanism in standard set of folders (sent and deleted). And disk space is so cheap now that you don’t have to care about making copies of some e-mails.
• Outstanding issues in the inbox. I leave all items which require some action from me, even when there’s no deadline, in the inbox. When I have spare while I scan my inbox and always find something to do.
• Important things marked as unread. That’s another level of outstanding issues. Things which are important but because of some reason can’t be solved instantly. They shine bolded in the inbox being my remorse. When I scan my inbox searching for tasks to undertake those positions easily get more attention than the whole rest. I also played for a while with flags to mark importance of things but for me they were too invisible for me.
• One-screen inbox. In my case that’s the goal which is very rarely achieved. To be honest when my inbox list fits into two screens I feel successful. And it doesn’t happen very often, so I guess I’m rather poor in finishing things. Short inbox means that I manage to complete most of actions I’m expected to.
• Cleaning sent items. I like the concept of working with sent items in the same way like with the inbox (moving to the deleted folder items which are completed). This way you have not only a list of issues which wait for you (inbox) but also a list of issues which wait for others. I really like the concept. Unfortunately I failed to be consistent with that one. It requires working on the regular basis with sent items folder. I’ve tried to clean it at the end of each week, but after several tough Fridays when I hadn’t managed to do it I gave up. I plan to try it once more.
I think that’s all. When someone sends me an e-mail it is rarely forgotten. Alas my reaction time isn’t always satisfactory for sender, but that’s completely different thing. Managing e-mails is a problem in many organizations, so starting with cleaning own inbox is a good idea.
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