When my desktop hard drive died, I had to reinstall from my backup. I did not, however, transfer my inbox. I left it on my laptop, instead deciding to start from scratch and see how I could do. That doesn’t mean I gave up on my other email. I just wanted to see if I could keep my inbox as small as possible.

It worked for a while. But work, life, family and oh, I don’t know, sleep, got in the way. And sadly, I’m back up to around 300 emails in there. Many of them are just email alerts that I need to read through and discard. They just keep adding up, though. I unsubscribed to alerts and newsletters that I didn’t use or need. I try to archive things immediately after I read them if they don’t need any action.

I’ve basically been glancing at them as they come in. I reply if it’s something I can deal with in less than a minute. I haven’t left anything important unanswered. So the question is, what’s in there?

Well, that’s what I should find out. I need to schedule some time to clear out my inbox a little. At minimum, I need to delete the email alerts that I’m not going to read. File away those newsletters for some down time, or re-evaluate whether they are useful to me.

Maybe keeping my inbox completely empty isn’t realistic. I do tend to use it like a to-do repository. And that doesn’t have to be a bad thing, as long as I don’t lose track of important messages.

How do you handle your inbox? Is it realistic for you to keep it close to zero? Obviously 300 emails are a bit too many to keep track of easily. But what about 100? 50? 10? What’s reasonable for you? And is it actually working for you?

[Image: sxc.hu]

Post from: My Organized Biz

I haven’t started the book yet. I’m hoping to find some interesting information in there. But I have to wonder about her title.

Is it feasible to skip checking email in the morning? I check mine to get my daily schedule and see what I need to work on that day.

However, I could see putting off email until you’ve had a chance to sit down and review your to-do list and see where you stand. Get some good, solid planning done before you open email and see what fires you need to put out.

If you plan your day before you check email (making sure you keep some flexibility in there), you can work in a calm setting. No emergencies. Just a solid look at what you need to accomplish.

After you get a majority of your thinking and planning done, then you can check your email to see if any of your priorities need to change.

At one of my previous jobs, though, my boss insisted that I check email first thing in the morning. Since I was checking customer email, he wanted to know if there were any issues from the night before that need resolution. I never quite felt like I was able to plan my day.

I was immediately set into a reactionary position, rather than a proactive mindset. Of course, that job also revolved around email, so it was pretty important that I check it frequently. But with so many interruptions, it definitely made it hard to get any long-term work and planning done.

Do you check email first thing in the morning? Why or why not? Does it help you plan your day, or does it seem like it’s immediately putting you behind?

Post from: My Organized Biz

The filers use lots of folders to categorize and file away their email. I can remember doing this in Outlook. You see, Outlook’s search function is terrible. So I would file by project or department or whatever seemed appropriate at the time.

Unfortunately, when it came to finding those emails, it wasn’t always easy to remember where I filed it. Was it by project A? Or department B? Or did I put it in the folder where I stored all of Boss’s emails?

It wasn’t a great system, but it was all I could do in Outlook.

Until I became a finder. What changed me to a finder? A couple of things. One was the advent of Google desktop. It radically changed how I found email. But so did inbox zero. With inbox zero I simplified everything. Since my folder system was so complicated, I couldn’t remember where I filed things anyway. Six or seven years’ of email will do that to you. (Why did I keep it that long? I worked for a state institution and I had to keep things relating to educational records.)

So I went to just 5 folders. And with searches via desktop, it didn’t really matter if I had those 5 folders or not. As long as I could remember a portion of the email conversation and even who sent it, I could find it. Sometimes it took refining the search a couple of times. But I always found what I needed.

Now I definitely subscribe to the finder way of retrieving email. Although I still do some filing by project just to make my searches (now I use spotlight on my mac) a bit shorter.

So which one are you? Why? And have you thought about trying an alternative?

[Image: sxc.hu]

Post from: My Organized Biz

(www.myorganizedbiz.com) – If you’re feeling overwhelmed with the volume of email you receive, it’s possible you need to make more frequent use of your delete key. Even with impossible amounts of storage available, you still need to hit delete every so often. In fact, the more frequently you use it, the better.

Here’s what happens when you keep every email that comes at you: you can’t find anything. Remember that email you sent to that client about the thing they wanted you to do next month? Well, would it be easier to pinpoint in 20 emails or 20,000? I thought so.

Even with great search functions like Google desktop and Spotlight, there’s no reason to keep everything. With search, you just need to remember a few key things from your message. But it’s much easier to wade through fewer emails to find exactly what you’re looking for.

A friend on Twitter had a great suggestion the other day. If she only needs a snippet of information from an email, she captures it someplace else and then deletes the email. Maybe it’s just a phone number. Or an appointment. Why not add it to your address book or calendar and then trash the email? She mentioned a Word document that she uses for things like that, but it could be anything that works for you: an appointment book, a database, a document, a spreadsheet. Anything – as long as you can find it later. As long as you can put your finger on it within a minute or two (preferably less) of needing it, all without too much searching.

I have been known to keep emails with addresses and phone numbers and even directions in them. I leave them in Gmail because I can access it from any computer. But Gmail also has a contacts section where I can list that same info. So wouldn’t it make sense to list it under the contact’s name where I can easily get to it, instead of searching thousands of emails from or to a particular person? I’m learning to be better at that.

So again, reduce the number of things you need to look through to find the information you need. Don’t spare that delete key – let it fly! What do you have trouble giving yourself permission to toss?

Post from: My Organized Biz

Overloading ourselves
We feel that information gives us power, so we subscribe to hundreds off RSS feeds. We have to keep up on the industry, our competition, trends, cool stuff, and our guilty pleasures. We read every email that comes through our inbox, even though we really don’t need to. We take on bunches of projects because we’re afraid to say no, and then panic because we have so much to do — and don’t know where to start. We see something on sale and buy it. Not because we need it, but because we saved money!

It all adds up to clutter, doesn’t it?

Simplifying
What can we do to clear our minds? Our desks? Take it in small bites.

Reduce your RSS feeds. Are you subscribing to more feeds than you can read? Do you have more than 5 unread posts on any site? When was the last time you read it? Even if it contains important info, if you’re not reading it, how can it help you?

You can mark everything read and start over, or you can delete the feed. Try marking it. If the list builds up again and you don’t read it for a week or two, it’s probably time to drop it.

Take a hard look at your projects. If you have more projects than time, you’re not going to give any of them the attention they deserve. What can you drop? What can you delegate?

This is where a virtual assistant or intern can come in handy. Yes, it takes time to train someone, but once that’s done you’ll see some time savings.

Be ruthless in culling your email. Subscribe to a bunch of email groups? When was the last time you read them or found useful information? Set up an email rule to send them to a folder. See if you miss them. If you don’t, unsubscribe.

Do you really need to read every email that crosses your path? Probably not. Scan them when you’re processing your inbox (you DO have a plan for processing email, don’t you?) and decide right then if you need to do something, if you need the information for later, or if you can dump it. Services like gmail make it easy to every single email, but you don’t really need to go back and look for cousin Mike’s joke email, do you?

Stop collecting “stuff.” Just because it’s on sale, even if it’s a coveted favorite office supply, doesn’t mean you need it. If you haven’t touched something in two years, will you ever? Dump it or donate it. (I’m not talking about important records. Just “stuff” that gets in the way.)

I am extremely guilty on this one and I need to work on it more. We have a very small place and not a lot of storage. I have to go through things every quarter and see what I’ve managed to hoard. If I buy a new item, an old one like it has to go. (Okay, I’m a girl, so that especially applies to bags – I love computer and work bags.)

Reducing the guilt
Remind yourself that it’s okay to prioritize what’s important to you. If that means you have to cut some things out, give yourself permission to do it. Don’t feel guilty. Realize it’s essential to your sanity.

Take it in small bites. It’s always best to break things into steps. You can complete one step at a time and avoid feeling overwhelmed. If you feel you have too much to do, it’s easy to just not do any of it. And that’s why the clutter builds. It’s all too much.

And if you forget, or fall off of the wagon, that’s okay. Just pick up where you left off. A little progress is better than nothing.

What other types of clutter do you have trouble with?

Image: Newscom

Post from: My Organized Biz

One thing that has helped me quite a bit is giving myself permission to delete e-mails. Yes, deleting. You see, with so much storage available to us, it’s easy to keep everything “just in case.”

The question to ask yourself is whether you’ll really need that e-mail later. Of course, contracts, agreements, quotes, and important e-mails like that should be kept. But when you have a long e-mail conversation, do you really need to keep everything, or just the few at the end that contain the entire string?

I used to keep all e-mails. But now, I quickly decide if it’s something I’ll truly need to refer back to. Is it strictly an “FYI” e-mail? Can you read and digest it, then move on? Do it.

If you’re worried that you’ll delete something you need, do a trial. Put the e-mails in the trash, but don’t empty the trash. If you don’t refer back to it in a few days (or a few weeks if you’re really worried), you probably won’t need it.

It’s so easy to be an e-mail pack rat. But you don’t have to be, and you’ll feel a sense of relief once you realize how freeing it is to hit that delete key. Go ahead, give yourself permission.

Image: James Cridland (creative commons)

Post from: My Organized Biz

At Yielding Wealth, Miranda’s got a fun video feature that captures my heart – and the essence of my own financial values.

Miranda also wrote a post called Me and My Cash Flow Problem – where she discusses a financial mistake she made and shares a lesson we can all learn from.

On TaxGirl, Kelly gives us the DL on health insurance premiums and how to deduct them. This is an oft-overlooked writeoff so check it out.

At StartupSpark, Shannon starts a conversation about business insurance – and how it can CYA in a dire situation. Chime in with your insurance experiences.

I love just about everything Glen at LifeDev writes, but this post is exceptional (I mostly wish I’d written it myself) and highlights the 10 ways history-makers kept focused.

And lastly, lively conversations about taming email continue at HomeBizNotes and The Golden Pencil – with great tips and ideas from all sides.

This weeks featured blog: Pimp Your Work. I must admit the name turned me off initially, but I spent some time checking out the content and was impressed. Get great info about how to make your work easier and your day more enjoyable.

Check out Celine’s suggestions for taming email (what a theme we’ve got going!) at Pimp Your Work.

Post from: My Organized Biz

If you’re bending under the load, beware of the lurking kind of email that you get and don’t even know it. It’s the kind of message that stays in your Inbox for weeks on end. You might have a star by it. And it. won’t. go. away.

Today’s tip of the week: Look out for “assignment emails.”

This type of message requires more than just a simple reply. Instead, you get an email that has the audacity to add to your workload.

Some examples:

• A cohort emails you and asks if you’ll write a testimonial for their new program.
• A friend asks you to read their latest thing and tell them what you think of it.
• Someone asks you to write a guest blog about a topic you’ll need to research.

In all of these cases, the message in the email requests that you do something, in other words, an email with an assignment embedded in it.

What to do?

1. Start to recognize when you get them. If you can easily fritter away a few hours answering email – without ever getting to your own work – you’re getting a lot of assignment emails. Start to notice whether you’re doing work you need and want to – or if you’re bouncing around doing other people’s assignments.

2. Determine whether you have all the details. If someone asks you to do something, you must have all the details before you can say yes. If they haven’t included the who-what-when-where-why and how, send a reply requesting when it’s needed by, how much detail they want, and other essential info.

This does three things: It communicates your caring for the person who sent it. It helps establish parameters for the agreement. It also buys you a little time so you can get back to doing your own work.

3. Ask yourself if it’s something you actually need to do. Once you have a reply with all the specifics, you can decide if it’s something you want to do and are able to complete within the timeframe.

Bringing awareness to emailed messages can cut down on your frustration and overwhelm. Remember that you’re your own boss first.

Do you get assigment emails? How do you like to handle them?

Post from: My Organized Biz