A co-worker brought it to my attention that I’m apparently doing e-mail wrong. Yep, I suck at e-mail.
There’s too much going on and it’s taking up too much of my time. A minute here, a minute there… At the end of the day it all adds up.
And yes, I know, I could adhere to the whole “I only check emails once in the morning and once in the afternoon” but frankly, it’s too easy to miss opportunities that way. Think Sales e-mails. Customer service e-mail. Partnership opportunities. Those are the kinds of e-mails I deal with on a day-to-day basis. All time sensitive. If I don’t respond, I lose a sale, anger a customer and miss out on the next big opportunity.
Timeliness counts.
Enter Inbox Zero!
The idea is really pretty simple. Instead of just “checking” e-mails, you process them right then and there. I don’t mean like sitting there, responding to each and every e-mail as it comes in… What I mean is, you apply one of the following actions:
- Delete or Archive it
- Delegate it
- Respond
- Defer (maybe it’s a business opportunity that you can take up at a later date)
- Do (a reminder to get an Action Item done)
So I spent a few hours yesterday organizing things in my work e-mail and funneling messages using the format above. I’m happy to say that I’m down to ~34 e-mails and I followed up on some important items that I unfortunately let fall through the cracks last week. My folders look something like this:
- Announcements (for new IDX coverage areas, feature udpates, etc.)
- Delegate (in the event I need to send a question up to Programming)
- Do (action items that need to get done now, like scheduling Training Classes with SoCal MLS)
- Forum Posts (new questions posted in our Community Forum that need to get answered)
- Post Ideas/Notes (links to articles that I might want to link to in a future post)
- Respond (I might not have the answer now, or time to respond this very moment, but I’ll get to it before the end of the day)
- Newsletters (I subscribe to several newsletters including copies of my own and I auto-tag these as they come in)
Funny, I look at that list and still think it needs to be shorter. But at least my inbox looks hectic and more manageable:
How do you do it?
What approach do you take for managing your inbox? What works for you?
You should try Sanebox.com. It makes Inbox Zero sooo much easier!
Thanks for the tip Dmitri! I’m gonna give it a spin… I managed to get down to 11 today!
I try ‘reference, to_reply, to_read, waiting, purgatory’ and then a separate place for all my long term archival buckets.
Purgatory is the most useful when I’m just getting slammed but I still want to keep important to_read, and to_reply emails going through the system. But as always, you gotta check it… lest you forever stay in limbo!