24 Tips to Get Organized in January: Tip #5, Create Email Folders
Tip #5: Create Email Folders
A lot of organizational web sites and books tout that you should check your email once per day. Once. In fact, Julie even mentioned it once on this site. She was citing from a book by Julie Morgenstern.
I commented on the post then - and I stand by it - that this is not a tip that works for everyone. In many professions, you can’t effectively “schedule” your email communications. In a fast-paced world, you are often expected to be on call for most of the work day. And in many occupations - like law (my particular profession) - that means being reachable by email.
Email can be overwhelming, though. I know many folks who allow email to “pile up” in their email inbox, resulting in the computer equivalent of a messy desk. The solution? You can’t cut down on the amount of email that you receive or you can’t manage when you receive it. But like most organizational strategies, you can develop a system for controlling how you deal with it.
I suggest creating email folders. This is easy enough to do in most email systems - hopefully, you are using the equivalent of iMail or Outlook and not relying on a solely web-based interface (though you can certainly create folders in those, too). Sometimes, folders are called “mailboxes” or other terms - look in the pulldown menu for a logical name and choose “create new.”
Create folders and subfolders by topic. Think of your computer’s inbox like a giant filing cabinet. What kinds of information do you need to store? Here’s a glimpse of some of my folders:
Next, create rules for routing your mail into the proper mailbox or folder. In most email programs, you can create rules using a bunch of different criteria including to/from, subject and keywords. I rely heavily on keywords.
My first plan of attack is ridding myself of as much spam as possible. Emails that tout products heavily in spam (such as Rolex, Cialis and Phen-Fen) are directed straight to my Junk mailbox and out of my way. This does work 100% for spam (emails that rely on pdfs to avoid these rules still make it in) but it reduces the overall junk and saves me the effort of continually hitting “Delete.”
Since I belong to several email list serve groups, I have created a rule to direct each of those, using the “to” rule into that group’s respective mailbox. Most list serve notices aren’t urgent and I can read them later.
Emails from my daughter’s school, my alma maters and more are routed into a personal folder - also to read later.
Bit by bit, my emails are sorted for me. What usually remains in my inbox - out of an average of more than 200 per day - are those emails that actually require my immediate attention.
Can I make the emails disappear? No. But I can manage them. That’s the key to organization. What about you? What are your tips for dealing with email?
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