Can someone explain very simply how to use email folders?

[ICantStomachWhelks]

I leave everything in unread until I've dealt with it (sometimes I read something and if it can wait I mark it as unread again).

I worry if I put things in folders I won't be able to find something as it will involve searching multiple places, have I misunderstood how it works?

I'm a freelancer and often work with the same people (not necessarily for the same client, they are freelancers too), so that adds to my confusion on how to file.

I know there are email clients that are supposed to help with productivity, but they seem baffling!

Mac Mail and Gmail both support labels/tags. Outlook also supports tags but less fully. Invest some time learning how to use them and it will save time as your mail archive grows. (I have decades old emails in some cases).

The advantage to labels is that you can have eg all of one projects mails labelled as “project” but also some of them labelled in a different category (eg blue types of work). You can then review the mails in their category just as if you were reviewing the contents of a folder but without having to choose a single folder for each mail.

Mail clients also allow you to create rules eg “for all generic mailings from X apply label Y and mark as read”. or “all mails from Key Client A to be marked important”.

Spend some time learning how to use the search features offered by your mail provider.

There are short YouTube videos from Apple, Google and MS on all these features which could be useful.

Some of the commercial office assistants work very well for prioritising, organising and drafting mail responses but the free versions are less useful.

Emails only go into a folder once they are finished with. Anything needing my attention/waiting on replies stays in my inbox. Think of the folder as the old fashioned filing cabinet, things only got filed when they were no longer needed to be worked on but still needed to be kept.

This is what I do. I could not cope with a soup of emails in my inbox, it’s so much easier to find emails when they’re filed by client as I know where to look for it and I can search across all folders if need be.

If you don’t want lots of folders then you just need one folder: Saved

Everything stays in your inbox until dealt with.
Then you either delete or move to Saved folder.

Your inbox = to do list

So many good tips here, thanks very much. I need to do something, I get so many emails I could clear my 'unread' inbox (only 139) now, but it would be back up to that level again tomorrow.

Mail's categories (promotions, primary etc) help to some degree but I'm endlessly moving emails into the right category so it's not foolproof.

You need to make it a habit. At the end of the day, I spend 15 minutes sorting my inbox, checking my to do lists, checking my meetings for the next day and reviewing my planned tasks and priorities. I feel so much calmer when I can keep to this routine.

You're right, I need to get rid of the rest (now down to 73, this is like a live birth thread in reverse) and then factor in time every day to get and stay on top of it.

I'm trying a strategy where instead of creating folders I'm pinning emails that need action. Will have a look at smart mailboxes too, I already use them to send all my email receipts for business expenditure into a mailbox, maybe there's something else I can do to streamline other stuff.

People will just not stop emailing me though. Part of my job has a 'buying' aspect to it (not exactly that) and people are endless flogging their wares. But I can't just send them all into a spam folder as I need to communicate with those exact same people about projects we're already working on together.

So why not use smart mailboxes it will filter the mails automatically?

I'm reporting back to say I've been trying out Spark, and I think it's helping. It seems to be about using the emails as a to do list and getting to zero emails.

It separates out stuff like newsletters from real emails, which helps with overwhelm. You can pin an email, and you can also mark emails as 'done' which means they disappear from the list but they're not deleted, or just leave them as 'seen'. I'm a big fan of 'done'.
So, if I've read it but it needs action it goes onto a pinned list, and if I don't want to delete it but I also don't want it in front of my eyes it goes into done.
The search facility is also a million times better than Mail.

I did have a go at the 'linking an email to a task strategy', but it was taking me longer to create tasks in Reminders or Todoist than it was to just pin an email.

I'm sure other email clients do similar, and I don't think I'd bother with the paid for version, but I'm enjoying Spark so far. Much less overwhelm. I finished the week with 12 unread and 13 that need action, which feels like a success.