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You vs. Your Inbox
5 Ways to Manage Your Email Without Losing Your Sanity
You don’t need to be chained to your inbox
Your inbox is your lifeline. It’s also a thief of your focus that often leaves you in an impossible bind. If you respond to each email as it comes in, you will constantly be interrupted and have to shift attention. If, on the other hand, you leave your inbox for too long, you might find yourself in a draining and never-ending game of catch-up. Worse, you risk missing important messages and then dropping the ball on expected replies. It’s a bad look.
What you need is a strategy. Here are five tools to help you create one.
Make appointments with your inbox
Scheduling specific, recurring blocks of time to deal with email can be hugely helpful. Many people benefit from scheduling two email blocks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Others prefer a few scheduled email intervals throughout the day. Find what works for you, and let your coworkers and clients know when and how it’s best to reach you.
Triage
If your job involves a significant amount of email, you may benefit from triaging your unread messages when you start your workday. Take care of emergencies first, then move to the rest of your emails in a way that makes sense for you.
In general, if you can deal with an email in fewer than five minutes, you should answer or delegate it as soon as you open it; it is most efficient to read something once and take care of it immediately while you are thinking about it.
If you won’t be able to compose an answer that day, send a quick response stating that you received the email and are working on it. If possible, include an estimated time frame for your full response. Then be sure to add that email to your to-do list.
Tag ‘em
Find a simple way to denote emails that require further follow-ups, whether that means starring them or otherwise tagging them with a label of your choosing.
Find a system that makes locating unanswered emails as easy as possible.
If you’ve completed an email and no longer need it, archive the message.
Filter out the emails you don’t actually need to read
If you’re a member of a cross-functional team, there’s likely a specific type of message that’s clogging up your inbox: recurring email threads that you’re not expected read and follow up on, but should generally be aware of.
If that sounds familiar, you could benefit from applying email filters that automatically archive these messages and store them in a designated folder. iI’s a good idea to make sure the emails are still marked as “unread” so you know which ones you have seen before and which are new. You can then schedule a time once a day or even once a week to look at them.
But be careful with this method: It can be common for people to completely forget about these folders and miss an important email that was filtered by mistake. You can alternately set up filters to automatically flag or label emails instead of archiving them. This has the benefit of helping you prioritize without the risk of missing the email altogether.
Nest your threads… or don’t
Setting up a nesting functionality will automatically group all replies and forwards of a particular message into one email thread. The benefit is a much clearer inbox: Each subject takes up just one line, and you can see all the responses in one place. This helps you to be sure you are seeing every response to the email chain before you chime in.
This doesn’t work for everyone, though. Some people find that nested threads actually make it harder to read an entire message chain. This is particularly true if one person replies to everyone on the email and someone else replies separately only to you, because both responses will be grouped into one chain.
Ultimately, each of these suggestions are just that: a suggestion. Play around with them to see what works best for you. Your ideal email system should be whatever ensures that you respond promptly, without leaving loose ends untended. You’ll feel more on top of your affairs, and you’ll give others a great impression of your ability and professionalism.
