by Rachel Smith
27 March 2015
I love a clear inbox. It keeps me calm and less stressed, it raises my productivity, it ensures nothing important is missed and I can’t lie – all that lovely white space gives my inner minimalist a warm fuzzy feeling. But I confess I’ve dropped the ball lately (at last count, my inbox had 836 emails in it; I blame the baby) and this weekend, my task is to tackle it. If you’re thinking your inbox could use a little de-clutter as well, here are the strategies I’ve found to work.
1. Don’t use your inbox as a to-do list. I’ll bet many of you do this; heck I do it – the old, ‘I’ll just leave that email there to remind me to do X…’ – and the message is still sitting there six months later, awaiting action and snatching up your precious white space. Instead, put ‘X’ on your external to-do list, delete the email and move on. I still love TeuxDeux if you’re seeking a good external to-do list option.
2. Adopt a quick-clear policy. Pick a time each day and work through your inbox with a ruthless efficiency – 4-hour Work Week guru Tim Ferriss calls this ‘batching’. It basically involves having a set time to so something – in your case, it will be trawling through your emails and eliminating as you go. I use four basic processes: reply/forward, delete, file or add something to my external to-do list. Not much time? There’s always Gretchen Rubin’s One Minute Rule, which I love for clearing as many emails as I can in one minute. We’ve always got a minute somewhere – right?
3. Eliminate the erroneous, irrelevant emails. Think about whether that email really needs a reply or a ‘thank-you’ or a ‘my pleasure’ or whether the discussion can end here (not at the expense of courtesy or with new clients/editors, of course, but with those you email all the time). I have to say, having a kid makes this a lot easier because you just don’t have oodles of time to go back and forth (and a lot of the time those back and forths aren’t necessary anyway). Make like you’re on instant messenger or even Twitter where conversations don’t often have a neat and tidy ending. It’s a huge time and inbox saver.
4. Delete double-ups. You know those long email conversations you can get into? Delete them. Not the most recent email, of course, but why keep the rest? The conversation history should all be in that top email anyway and the rest are best binned.
5. Set up email filters. This can save you oodles of time in a world where many of us get upwards of 120 emails a day. Your filter can shoot top priority emails (from editors or clients) into a folder which you can manually check – or you can filter all those notifications you may need to read but not right now (you know the ones – from Paypal, Melbourne IT, your bank, your ISP about their weekend updates etc etc).
6. Group and delete. I try and do this once a week because there’s a huge satisfaction in getting rid of swathes of newsletters you’ve never read, email jokes from your family, 50% off hotel offers, spam about Coach handbags and so forth. It’s so easy to group emails and delete the groups of the same emails – simply filter by ‘subject’ or ‘from’ and get busy with that delete key. You’d be surprised at how quickly you can cull your inbox.
7. Use the VIP function on your iPhone. When you’re really busy, it’s a great way to quick-check emails from key people.
8. Delegate your email. Boy is this one hard. Who wants someone else poking around in their email account? But, if you get hundreds of emails a day and much of it needs similar responses or can be handled by a virtual assistant, do it. You’ll save yourself hours. We have hired admin help for the Rachel’s List emails in the past and it’s quickly addictive having someone else deal with the email overload. You can always create a template for your VA to deal with all those hundreds of non-priority emails on your behalf, leaving you free to write, chase new business, etc.
9. If you’re using Outlook, use colour categories. You can filter emails into categories automatically or assign colours to certain people.
10. Unroll.me. Friends recommended this service on Facebook so I tried to give it a go, but it didn’t support my email provider (mutter, mutter). However, if your Yahoo or Gmail account is out of control with junk email newsletters, I hear it’s good. It basically helps you unsubscribe from a heap of newsletters with just one click, and combine your favourite subscriptions into a daily digest called the Roll-up.
11. If all else fails… set up a separate email account just for editors, clients and maybe a few friends/family. You can have everything else come to your main email which you check when you have time, but your priority account will ensure those important messages get through right away and never get lost in your inbox tsunami.
Got any tried and tested tips for wrangling your inbox?
Hi Rachie,
So glad you brought this up as it’s one of my biggest problem areas. I always think they’re going to be super important and that I must read every friggin’ link to feel on top of my game.
My current favourite way of dealing with the avalanche is using the hotmail delte from inbox and block future messages from newsletters that no longer have anything new to say.
Thanks Leo. Quick update for you and anyone reading – I just whittled my inbox down from 1200+ to 13. There is WHITE SPACE under my emails for the first time in ages. So pumped 🙂
Anyone else out there doing an inbox de-clutter?