Tired of your inbox controlling you?
This article applies mainly to
Microsoft Outlook, but may
also be useful for web-based
email like Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL.

You’ve been out all day.  The house needs cleaning, the dinner needs cooking, the garden needs weeding and the family are clamouring for your attention.  What you really want to do is hide yourself away get a bit of time to yourself.  The last thing you need at the end of your day is an equally demanding workload in your email inbox.  But there it is, that bottomless pit of things to read, family, friends and/or professional associates to respond to, people to follow-up, tasks to do and more.  No matter how many emails you deal with, there always seem to be hundreds, if not thousands, more beneath them.

And what should you do with those ones you know you need to keep?  They’re piling up among all the ones you still have to do something about in a disorganised mess.  Or if you’re like me you have attempted to start a filing system using subfolders in your inbox based on different categories and people you interact with.  One for family, one for business, one for suppliers and businesses you use, one for each of the projects you are trying to work on in your “spare” time, one for forwards you just don’t want to delete, one for email newsletters ... and on it goes.  But the more you try to work this system the more complicated it gets and the harder it is to actually find the things you’ve filed when you need them.

This article, apart from being yet another thing for you to read(!), is your guide to one method of keeping control of your inbox.  Even if you’re only getting a few emails per day, this system provides a very simple way of keeping up and keeping track.  It’s so simple, in fact, that if you aren’t already doing it, you’ll find yourself saying ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’.  It is useful for personal email, but especially relevant for professional email.  Everyone is bound to overlook an email from time to time, but these email inbox instructions are essential if you want to reduce the chances of that happening.

Instead of dreading your email inbox because it’s just too big for you to deal with, you will:

• Free up time to work on tasks, thus become more productive
• Reduce stress and frustration
• Reduce the procrastination factor, thus keep up with deadlines better
• Maintain better relationships and present a more professional image
• Make it easier to reduce the size of your inbox when you need to

Step One: Simplify Your Sub-folders

Create two sub-folders in your inbox.  Label one “01 TO DO” and the other “02 DONE”.  Move any pre-existing sub-folders you saved for filing purposes in “02 DONE”.  You will not add to those folders any more, but you have them there in case you need to find something.  Depending on your particular needs, you may want to create a third folder for eg. personal email (if it’s a work inbox) or for email newsletters, if it’s important for you to keep those.

Step Two: Clear Your Inbox

Start to think of your email inbox as a place where people put memos or information that you need to do something with immediately, even if you can’t complete the entire task straight away.  It’s like having something left on your chair in an office.  You can’t sit down until you have moved it somewhere else.  Depending on what it is you will do one of four things:

• You will read/action it immediately and then file it or throw it away
• You will put it somewhere for you to work on later
• You will pass it to somebody else to deal with
• You will not do anything with it and will simply throw it away

Clearing your inbox is important because it gives you space to breathe—rather than having a huge list of things in your inbox which you have to look through and re-read over and over again to determine what you need to do, you know exactly what needs to happen without even looking at the emails.

So file every single thing that is in your inbox into “01 TO DO” if you still need to do something on it or “02 DONE” if you don’t need to do anything further, but you do want to keep it.  If you don’t need to keep it, delete it!

If you work with other people who tend to drag the chain on their part of a job, create a sub-folder in “01 TO DO” called “Pending”.  This is where you’ll save anything that you do need to take action on, but you can’t do so until one of your colleagues gives approval, provides more information or some other action they need to perform.  You don’t need to go overboard with the “Pending” sub-folder.  If it’s likely the person will follow through the same day, then just leaving it in your inbox until that’s done is probably the easiest way to go.  Just don’t let emails sit in your inbox more than a day or two.

Step Three: Ongoing Steps

Now that you have an empty inbox you can proceed to work on the things you need to work on.  Some people like to use to do lists to help them prioritise.  Others use a physical in-tray (or pile of stuff on their desk) or their email inbox.  I like to use a combination of all three.  My physical in-trays are organised similarly to my email inbox.  There’s one for jobs “TO DO” and one for jobs that are “Pending”.  Paperwork for jobs that are done is filed in a big filing cabinet.  My email inbox and my physical in-tray do not usually have the same jobs.  There are some jobs that only have electronic information and others that only have physical paperwork and some that have both.

It was once thought that the information age was going to usher in a concept known as the “paperless office”.  But most would agree this is not the case.  Technology simply isn’t there yet.  It can be useful to have paperwork even for electronic jobs for three reasons:

• Some people are more likely to do something about papers (in a pile on their desk or in an in-tray) than emails sitting in their ‘TO DO’ folder or reminders popping up on the screen.  Most people feel better when their workspace is clear of clutter so a piece of paper is likely to be actioned at some point.
• You can quickly scribble notes on your papers of where you’re up to and what you’re waiting for.  If you have a terrible memory like me, then this is a very useful habit.
• If you work in teams or if you have managers or boards you need to clear ideas and projects with, it can be useful to have paperwork you can grab to go into a meeting without extensive preparation needed.

The best way to make this system work is to regularly try to achieve the following:

• Clear your inbox.  Move every incoming email into “TO DO”, “Pending”, “DONE” or delete it.
• Try to empty the “TO DO” sub-folder and in-tray.  If this isn’t possible, you do need to be frequently looking through these items and deciding where your priorities lie and working on those tasks, delegating others, putting off deadlines etc.
• Look through the “Pending” sub-folder and in-tray and follow-up people who should have had long enough to do their part by now and may need a reminder.

Finding stuff
Now that your inbox is relatively organised, it should be fairly easy to find emails when you need them later.  Instead of having to ask yourself what sub-folder out of 10 or 20 you saved it in, you will know where it is.  If it’s a job you haven’t finished yet it will be in “TO DO”.   Because “Pending” is a sub-folder of “TO DO” your searches in “TO DO” will also bring up email saved in “Pending”.  If it’s a job you finished, you know it will be in “Done”.  And if worse comes to worse you can also search your sent items for your side of the conversation.  The search features in Microsoft Outlook 2007 are very fast and reliable.  Just click on the folder you want to search and start typing in the ‘search’ box up the top.  Note: having simplified folders like this can also be useful for your colleagues to find stuff when you are away, if that is an issue.

Reducing the size of your inbox
With a well-organised inbox, clearing out un-needed data to save space is a breeze.  Here’s are a few things you can do:

• Go to your ‘sent items’ folder and organize them by size (in Outlook 2007, click the ‘Size’ heading up the top).  The emails with attachments will appear at the top of the list.  Double-click on each email to open it then right-click on the attachment(s) and go to ‘Delete’.  Save it and close it.
• If you don’t need to keep your older sent items for reference or legal purposes, organise them by date and delete everything 6 months old and older.
• Open your “DONE” folder and remove the attachments as per no. 1 above.  If you haven’t already saved these attachments to a folder in your computer, do so beforehand if you need them.

A good habit to get into is asking yourself whether others will need the email now or in future before you move each one into “DONE”.  If you work in a team, it can be useful for others to see your correspondence with certain customers, suppliers or even other staff without having to interrupt you for it.  Pick a network folder you all have access to and click and drag the emails from your inbox into the folder.  If you’re using Microsoft Outlook, this will create an ‘MSG’ file, which can be opened by anyone with Outlook and retains the attachments.  If you work with people on Macs, then instead of clicking and dragging, open the email and go to “File” à “Save As” and choose either “TXT” or “HTML”.  You will need to drag out the attachments separately.  Rename files using the following format:

[YEAR][MONTH][DAY]_[INITIALS OF SENDER]_[SUBJECT].msg

Eg. 20081206_AG_clearyourinbox.msg

Think about your needs in years to come (imagine your email inbox has been accidentally erased, but you do still have your computer files).  If you’re an employee consider whether a future staff member might need these email messages in years to come when you aren’t there anymore.  Agreements about promotions, copyright and controversial topics can be relevant years later. 

Hopefully you found some useful insights in this article.  If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.