Help - how to manage emails

[1winterblues]

I am not very organised, and over the years I have managed to progress and now manage my team, but my emails are my biggest weakness.

I can't seem to get on top of them ever, have about 2000 unread in my inbox

Every filing system I set up goes out the window in a couple of days. I'm constantly worried I have missed something at work. I work in an email heavy culture and often get about 100 emails a day.

Please share with me your hints and tips to get an organised inbox
TIA

Embracing my ruthless side. If it doesn't need action from me it gets deleted or filed as soon as I've looked at it.

The only ones I leave in my inbox are the ones that need me to do something. If they're urgent or have a specific deadline I set a flag. Once they're dealt with I file them.

Having set times to just focus on emails rather than dipping in and out every time one pops up is more effective too.

So are those 2000 emails in your work inbox or your personal one?

Every 3 months or so I move them all onto a memory stick and starts an empty inbox again, which I tell myself I’ll keep on top of.

And keeping it simple. My filing system is just a way to shift everything I don't actively need to do something with out of my inbox and make it a little quicker to find things again if necessary. But the search function is usually enough.

I usually find if my admin/org system is leading to me getting overwhelmed it's because I'm using a system that's too complicated or doesn't suit my personality.

Sweeping up at the end of the day is also useful if you're having a cumulative loss of control of filing/reading.

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz

So are those 2000 emails in your work inbox or your personal one?

Work in box - I'm too embarrassed to admit how many are in my personal emails 😀

In fairness I do read most things it's just the ridiculous email trails where one person emails 10 people and they all respond and copy every one on. Plus our team is a coordinating role, so we often get copied into information and reports, but someone else in my team will save and file things. I'm just copied in for information

I wouldn't suggest this for ones you've read and filed, but for the unread ones, sort them by date (oldest to newest) and delete all the ones that are older than 3 months.

Oh god if you are caught up in an email trail that you don't need to be in then just delete them as you see them.

If the whole convo is one you might need to refer back to, then just keep the most recent one.

Alternatively, if its something you want to keep but it's a big old stream of info, reply to someone in the group with just "thanks" - then delete the incoming mail on it. The previous convo will then be saved in your outbox as you mailed out with the rest of the chat included.

Close email if you gave an urgent task to finish, put an out of office on if needed

3 Ds: Either Do it, Delete it or Delegate it - aim to only touch each item once

Also, don’t respond to everything immediately, often if you wait the chain will go on and on and someone will have sorted it out by the time you get to it.

Archive whenever your mailbox is huge, you can still find stuff if you need it but it clears it up

Pick up the phone sometimes

Plus our team is a coordinating role, so we often get copied into information and reports

It would do you all well to have these reports saved in a shared folder. Evern better if that folder uses Sharepoint as the document is live and then the link you save will always take you to the most up to date version. You can also have a few people in it at once.

Emailing copies of reports round is archaic!

I’m a rubbish email-filer too. I’d suggest sorting by subject line, read the most recent one in the thread and delete the others. I do this when I get back from a holiday and it seems to work for me. Also try and encourage internal messaging system (Teams, Slack) for your immediate team or office. Makes such a difference. We have a channel for social, one for business, one for the team. It sounds like a lot but it really helps organise communication.

One rule I try to follow is either commit to doing email or not, rather than just sort of glancing over it. If I open an email I need to act on it, either by deleting, replying, filing etc. I don't always stick to it but it helps a bit.

It really depends on your job, what the emails contain, how they affect what you actually do to produce whatever your job requires you to produce.

The fact that you leave so many sitting around suggests that they aren't questions that need answering and are then done and can be deleted. Anyway, without more info and spending a few hours sitting behind you looking over your shoulder it's impossible to say! There are too many variables.

One thing that has massively helped me get organised in my job (and I was pretty similar to you) was to use Microsoft OneNote to file email messages, documents, slides, minutes and notes relating to particular projects, and to annotate them onscreen, to file them quickly and sensibly without needing to print anything, and to have access to them all wherever I am. I can then archive the original emails (and everything else) and keep an empty inbox. It took me a day or two to get OneNote up and running, but it's made my working life so much easier and more efficient.

I get a similar number of emails. Fucking hate them. A colleague told me a system based around having 3 folders 'action', 'waiting' and I can't remember what the 3rd one is called but its for things you need to keep. The reason I forget the third one is it doesn't work for me, what I've ended up with is action, waiting, and then a filing cabinet for each of my main projects and like a 'reference' library (maybe that was it) for things I need to keep (technical work area). Avoid sub folders, it'll become a bloody mess, instead rely on the search function to find what you need. So I have half an hour first thing in the morning, get a coffee, I read the email and put it in the right folder straight away. Meaning my inbox is normally nearly empty now at least. The action box can get a bit rammed though. Overall it is better and I have stuck to it, with a few revisits.

I had to spend a good day getting it sorted in the first place. If not longer.

If you don't get on with filing systems then don't worry about one. Just have Inbox and "Saved". If you do need to refer back to something you will hopefully be able to find it by searching on key words/date/sender etc.

I think the try to read it once only system applies to emails - if it's just for information then read it and file it in Saved. If you're just copied because someone thought you should know then just file it to Saved. If the email can be responded to quickly then do that and file it under Saved. If it definitely needs action but is not quick, then add it to your "to do list" (whatever format that takes) and leave in the Inbox until dealt with. That means the only stuff in your Inbox is things you need to action. I tend to do this 2 or 3 times a day and if not busy will just action stuff as it arrives. If the Inbox starts building up, then I prioritise actioning stuff I've left there and/or take a long hard look at whether I really need to do anything (and if I don't, it gets moved to Saved).

With your current email I'd be tempted to keep anything in the last week that sounds like it might be important and archive off everything else.

Okay so if you have 2,000 unread emails I would do this:

Set aside a day (yes, a day) to deal with them.

Sort them by size not by date. This is quite motivating as instantly you can let go of massive emails from months/yrs/weeks ago.

As you delete and file they will go from ‘massive’ down to ‘extremely large’ etc. I find it helps me to do it this way.

Set up folders for everything. I do mean everything.

Set up rules for certain email addresses. I am HOUNDED by internal It Helpdesk service reminders. They go straight in the trash.

Be ruthless. If it’s important they will chase you and re-send.

Yeah you could create folders like

1. Info for stuff I'm working on
2. Older stuff I might need
3. Waffle

Anything you see drop in that is just stuff you've been ccd into historically and keep getting just drag straight to the Waffle folder.

Be ruthless about deleting stuff. If you don't need to reply file it. If you do need to reply do it immediately if you can. A lot of my work is based on email. I have no unread emails in my inbox.

My most annoying colleague also says she has 1000s of unread emails; part of the reason is she copies in a lot of people herself to her mails and mails she received so brings a lot of it on herself. She also goes to too many unnecessary meetings so loses out on time to actually get on with her job. She will also reply to urgent stuff days after the deadline so loses respect.

I manage multiple inboxes at work for myself and others and found the game changer for me was using conversation view which basically keeps all of the emails from one chain together. It means that if there are loads of emails in the chain they aren’t littered through your other emails, so there are less lines to shift through and the most recent email is always at the top.

Delete everything you can. Unsubscribe from junk and any mailing lists you don’t need. Rules for any emails you don’t need to see for them to go straight to a file. Colour coding to categorise and a very basic filing system you can stick to. Aim for only emails with actions in your inbox with everything else filed.

I’m in the same boat so following for the tips.

Do people really delete work emails?! I keep everything 😬

Also following as this is an issue for me!

@winter12345

Do people really delete work emails?! I keep everything 😬

Same!

@winter12345

Do people really delete work emails?! I keep everything 😬

DH is the same. In fact when we met he would print out every email he got and file it. I took the piss put him.

There's so much so and so is leaving, internal comms rubbish or people replying all with "thanks"

What I do is for anything which needs action immediately, respond and deal with it, then file (I have lots of folders, but you could just have a saved type folder if that works better).

Anything that needs action later, I allocate time in my calendar and note who needs what and email is flagged with a specific colour for action so that I have a specific time to deal with it. I don't always have the time to complete an action the minute I read an email, so I need to prioritise.

All the other stuff for info, gets read and filed in an appropriate folder.

I get upwards of 200 emails a day - the record for a weeks annual leave was 955.

I also have an email rule so that notifications that I can see elsewhere (E.g rotas, notifications from teams chats, expense claims) get automatically deleted so they don't clutter up my inbox.. rota planning and expenses gets dealt with at a specific time each month, and doing it as I go from email notifications has zero benefit to anyone because of our payroll and rota systems.

And I've trained my team so if they need me urgently to text or call rather than sending an email.

I very much could do better, but that's my current system which works. It took a few different tries of different systems to make sure it worked.