Having an organised email inbox – and why I don’t think Inbox Zero is really attainable

I’m continuing on my theme this month of being organised. Quite frankly, it is easier thought about than initiated. It is extremely hard to remain organised.

I laughingly think of myself as being fairly adept with technology and these days we’re really not supposed to have stacks of paper all over the place, as most of our correspondence, documents and other information travels to us through cyberspace and doesn’t require being printed out.

Hah! I look at my desk at this very moment, and I am surrounded by papers – folders, files, envelopes, notes, notebooks, magazines, the list doesn’t end. Some I’ve brought in to my space of my own volition, but still more comes from my Post Office mailbox, from helpful others who want to show me something or leave me a book to read. I subscribe to a monthly business ‘subscription box’ – and it is absolutely the best sub-box I have ever received. It always includes a business book, so this has increased my TBR pile.

I explained in my last blog that I do use an A4 paper diary as a kind of mini filing cabinet to store date sensitive paperwork and I also run my tailored version of a bullet journal. What I didn’t mention is that I also journal, and run several books for different purposes – so they add to my paper clutter.

Right now, I’m going to explain my system for sorting electronic ‘paperwork’ – the dreaded email inbox which instills fear into the hearts of many.

Every now and then my inbox reaches the dizzying heights of up to 5000 accumulated emails. Usually happens when I take my foot off the pedal and have a week or so of disorganization. Frankly, it’s not worth it! Have a routine and stick to it and you can’t go wrong, but if you do fall off the wagon there are a few strategies to get things back on track.

Inbox Zero is like a unicorn – it really doesn’t exist. Even if we have nothing in there it will quickly fill up again, and then there are all the emails you’ve dragged or diverted into folders to deal with later!

If you are feeling extremely overwhelmed by your email inbox, then click on your most recent email, hold down the shift key and scroll down for four weeks. Move all of these emails into a separate folder – call it what you will – I call mine ‘Bring Back’. Then go back to your bulging inbox and delete what’s left. Yep, delete it all. This is how it works. Anything anyone wanted an urgent response to: they will email again and chase you up. Everything else is irrelevant.

If you feel scared, don’t worry, make sure your deleted folder isn’t set to automatically delete everything in it without your permission and you can keep all those lovely deleted items there as long as you like – just remembering that eventually you really must empty the folder!

Once you’ve deleted everything, then go to the ‘bring back’ file and drag everything back into your inbox and start working through them one by one.

Managing emails needs a level of ruthlessness and some deep breaths, but you can do it!

Another way of going through your massive email inbox is to go through each email individually and do the following:

Set up some folders:

               #Answer Now

               #Hold for Response

               #Read Now

               #Save

If you put a # in front of the file name, they will all stay together at the top of your subfolder lists – especially useful if you’ve already got other subfolders and you use ‘Rules’.

The folder names are pretty self-explanatory, and you can create your own versions, according to your needs.

Start going through your inbox and drag relevant emails into those boxes. Set a timer for 5 or 15 minutes to work through, as this is all pretty tedious, and you’ll get fed up with it fairly quickly.

When you get to an email from a mailing list you can decide whether to unsubscribe if it doesn’t serve you any more, or if it was one of those signups you had to have because you wanted the free download they were offering. 

If you find an email from a regular source, like your newspaper subscription, then you can do a search for the publication in your email search box, choose ‘current folder’ and when the results come up, you can delete in bulk.

When your timer has beeped, go into your ‘answer now’ folder, set the timer and start working through as many of these emails as you can. When you’ve exhausted this folder you may want to go back to your email inbox, if you’ve still got a mass of emails to get through, or start on the ‘read now’ folder. Read, skim, file if you need to, then delete.

If you have subfolders where you have collected other emails in various categories, check the age of what’s in those folders and just delete them all. If you haven’t read them now, you’ll never have time to read them in the future!

Managing emails needs a level of ruthlessness and some deep breaths, but you can do it!

Let me know if you’ve got any other strategies or whether you’ve tried any of the ones I use.

Have a virtual coffee with me!

Want to chat about how I can help you or your workplace be more organised let's connect over a virtual coffee.

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Nan Berrett creates visibility for small business as well as mentoring small business owners and startups to help them navigate the mountain of knowledge which seems to be part of our everyday life in a digital world. She is based in regional South Australia in the beautiful Clare Valley and is happy to travel to meet clients or chat over Zoom. Find out more or book some time to chat: www.wordsolutions.com.au