One of the best email tips I ever received helped me escape an endless bout of inefficiencies that were all tied to my inbox. This applies to your work inbox, your home business inbox and your personal inbox. It is the one email organization tip that has made the biggest difference in how much time I spend in my inbox each and every day.
So what about you? Tired of being bombarded by endless streams of emails and having to file the important ones? Do you have a list of folders that runs off the bottom of the left side of your screen? If this sounds familiar, then have I got the an email tip for you!
A typical day for me would start with email. I would compile dozens in the first few hours of the morning in my work email, a few dozen more in my personal email and the same for my internet marketing email. I used to file most of these in a complex array of folders. It took about an hour of my time to file all of my emails each day!
Then I discovered GMail and learned about receiving ALL of my emails into this one account. I was sick at first. I began transferring all of my emails to my GMail account and “labeling” (GMail’s version of folders) them. Then I decided that I had to try the archive feature. That is why I was trying GMail to begin with. So I created two labels.
I have my “Read & Review” label for anything I can read while I am out and about or have some time to kill. I have my “Bacon” folder (I think I got that one from Lifehacker.com) where I created a filter for any email that has the words “to unsubscribe” in them (I’ll talk more about this in the next email tip post!) And that’s it. I have two folders (labels) for my internet marketing emails and for my personal emails.
In my Outlook (work) and Earthlink (personal) email apps I have created one main folder called @Archives. Anyone that uses GMail already knows that GMail focuses on the “archiving” aspect of the application. The Google search function is so powerful that you can find any email you need via search and you save yourself all of the time of filing or sorting through several folders to find that one email that you need right now.
I found that this works with Earthlink and the very strong Microsoft quick search function in Outlook. So I took one of the biggest features from GMail and applied it to my other two email accounts also. In my Outlook (work) email I also have an “@Followup” folder for things I need to followup with others on. I go through that every Thursday morning when doing my weekly review. Then there’s the “Hold” folder for anything that I need to hold onto for a project or task that I will be completing within the next few days.
It may be a bit uncomfortable at first, but go ahead, try it. I was a skeptic at first too. But after learning how awesome the archiving feature of GMail is, it was easy to apply to my other applications!
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Filed under: Productivity
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