Help with email strategies

[tearstainedbakes]

Can I ask for your strategies for managing a rapidly overflowing inbox. I seem to go away with an empty inbox (mainly because I've filed everything away somewhere with the assumption that they'll email back if it's important) but I come back to about 700 emails and never have the time to work through them.

I managed to get down to 450 and within a day I'm back at 600 again. Feels like an impossible task.

Those people who always manage to stay on top, how do you manage this?

FWIW I'm a lecturer so emails isn't really my actual job.

Anyone?

Maybe I should have posted in AIBU for the traffic 😂

Do they emails actually relate to your work? Can you sort by topic so if there are several replies to a group email you only see the most recent one?
Are any of the emails newsletters or other mass email that you didn't sign up for?

Is it holiday backlog or incoming that cause the problem? They have different solutions.

And are you getting immediate action (minutes / hours) stuff via email, or things that aren’t so urgent?

Spend time unsubscribing to mailing lists you don't need /have time for etc. Even internal ones if they are no longer relevant and you can get away with it. If not, setup rules that emails containing certain words or for certain senders go to folders automatically.

Delete all previous emails in a thread then only read most recent and scroll back if necessary.

Speak to Sandra or whoever in your department that is a constant cc'er for info and tell her you don't need the info thanks.

Create filters on your mailbox to divert emails to folders.

I have folders for various newsletters, staff emails from the CEO, etc. I go through them when I am ready. They no longer need to languish in my inbox.

I have folders in my email and rules to put incoming emails into the relevant one. That way I can deal with anyone I know to be urgent straight away, plus I mark those that I don't need to be actually read as read in one go. The rest I look at once a day, usually just skimming for anything that needs to be dealt with.

I'm in the nhs and receive around 150 emails a day. I set rules so that emails that come from my boss, director and chief officer go into an Urgent To Read file. I set routine reports (performance data, bed numbers, discharge summaries) to go into folders so I can choose to look at them. Labelled Beds, Cancer Performance, or whatever.
I get some regular newsletters that I like to read but never have time. I set these to auto file into a For Review folder and then delete them every month to stop them building up. I think there are more sophisticated ways to file such as sending emails to a folder/trash if you are cc'd not the recipient, and setting your inbox to only send/receive during certain time periods. I may try this as, in addition to the volume, it's the urgency and constant interruptions that really bothers me. In my last job my office was a revolving door of gottaminutes and the phone would ring often. The new place is very email heavy yet I still worry I'm missing things that are important amidst the dross. At least with the drop ins/calls I knew the urgent stuff was dealt with.

I also try and role model good email etiquette in the hope it will rub off on others. I use relevant subject lines such as FYI, URGENT, REQ. I never reply with a 'thanks' or 'ok' to clutter others' inboxes. I never cc people unless they really need to know, ditto to reply all.

Yes, create rules or filters for things with particular topics in the title, or from particular people - they can either be sent to a specific folder (so you check the high priority folder regularly because it contains only messages from key people, for example) or you can colour code how they appear in your inbox so it's easier to spot the respective importance (I used to have messages from my director showing red, messages where I was only cc-ed showing blue, messages from a particular dept showing green).

I have two slots a day for tackling the inbox - sorting the priorities, booking time in the schedule for complicated responses, and firing off answers for the quick/simple things. And I delete anything that isn't needed - if it has no actions for me and is not relevant to my job. If the delete button is too scary you can always create a "30 days" folder, dump it all in there, and delete after 30 days if you haven't needed it

If you're getting 150 messages a day, you might need a number of solutions: some may be about managing your inbox effectively, some might be about influencing others to improve their email use (stop cc use just to cover their back, stop reply all etc), some may need consideration of whether email is the right tool for the issue (are there more suitable ways to share and store information about a project or task, such as a shared Trello board?)

Oh wow, loads of great suggestions here, thank you.

I think I need to put some proper time aside to set up folders and unsubscribe to a few things.

I can probably set up folders for all the weekly updates from various university big wigs given that I never have time to read them anyway 😂

Next job is to google how to set up rules and divert to folders 😂

A good tip for your newsletters is to set up a rule for any emails that have the word "unsubscribe" in them and divert them into a folder to read at a later date.