Hey! Clean up Your Email Box!

Due to skier’s thumb, I can’t type long notes, articles, or blog entries. I’ve used the opportunity to clean up my email box since it only involves the mouse (which I’ve become adept at with my left hand though I’m a lefty, I use the right hand for mousing business) and a finger or two instead of both hands.
I use filters to file emails from certain companies and email addresses into specific folders. I keep the inbox as empty as possible. It rarely reaches 10 emails after a review. You’ve probably read most of these tips at some place or another, but it never hurts to have a refresher.
Here’s a list of things to do to clean up email boxes with details following.

  • Notice which newsletters you never read or always delete and take the following action:
    1. Unsubscribe.
    2. Change email options to help you receive fewer messages from the sender. Some companies have multiple options or let you control the frequency (daily, weekly, monthly) as well as individual vs. digest (all the individual emails combined into one daily digest).
    3. Create or edit the filter to file it away or delete it.
  • Take instant action on emails that won’t take longer than five minutes. For example, someone asking for canned food donations? Get up, grab a few cans, put in bag, and put by door or inside car. As soon as that’s done, delete or file the email.
  • Create a folder for things you like to read (newsletters), but they don’t require action or instant reading. That way, when you get a break or need a break, you just jump to the newsletter or reads folder and read away.
  • Create a folder for current work. This helps me ensure I keep my inbox as clean as possible while keeping current work in an easy to find place. Once I finish the project or assignment, I file the email into its permanent folder.
  • Create a folder for other email accounts. For example, I’m a big PTA volunteer and have PTA email addresses. Those all go into my PTA folder instead of my main inbox. When I take care of the PTA item, I file the email into the specific PTA folder (elementary school, high school, or city PTA) out of the main PTA folder. The main PTA folder acts like my inbox for PTA stuff.
  • Create a folder for follow up. These items have no time constraints and low priority. Or you can treat the folder that you check once a week or else the emails will stay there for too long.

Sometimes we forget to change things up. For instance, I’d delete the same newsletters that came into my inbox daily. So I started paying attention to these deletions. As a result, I’ve either unsubscribed to the newsletter or change the filter to send it to the delete folder or other folder out of my way.
I don’t want to unsubscribe to all of them because some do still have gems. Either it may not be what I need on a daily basis or they send too many promotional emails between newsletters with valuable content.
Gmail handles most of my newsletter subscriptions. So I can always search if I need something. I rarely enter Gmail’s trash folder beyond searching for items. With my desktop email, I’d delete trashed emails a couple of times a week. It used to be every day. Gmail helped me curb that wasteful habit. I never delete trash in Gmail.
In essence, Gmail helped become less obsessive with email cleaning. I added Gmail into Thunderbird (my email client) as an account using IMAP. Gmail has instructions for doing this. The Gmail folders in Thunderbird reflect those in Gmail. I can create a new folder in Thunderbird for Gmail and it appears on Gmail, too.
I moved a lot of my Thunderbird filed emails into Gmail. Three reasons:

  1. Access the messages from any computer, anywhere.
  2. Better backup solution than my computer’s backup.
  3. Keep local inbox lightweight as attachments go into Gmail or elsewhere.

I don’t file everything into Gmail because I like the faster and offline access to the emails on my computer. That’s a personal preference. I also moved many of my newsletter subscriptions from my desktop account to Gmail.
Only habit I haven’t broken is checking email less often. But email is my “phone” that I hear from school and elsewhere needing instant addressing (like to pick up my sick kid from school). What tips do you have for better email management?

9 thoughts on “Hey! Clean up Your Email Box!”

  1. Hi Meryl,

    Very nice presentation of email handling approaches.

    I use the pop-ups from Growl for Mail on the Mac and Outlook’s built in ones to solve the focus problem of needing to be continuously attuned to email. I also look at the inbox when I get back to my desk. That way I can stay focused on work and still respond quickly to emergency items in email.

    Heal quickly – one handed typing is certainly a pain. 🙁

  2. You’re talking to a woman who just cleaned out 200 emails but has, gulp, 700+ more to go. I’m slowly importing email addresses to Gmail from AOL (yeah, I know!) and organizing my emails into better groups.

    I’m not the most organized person and I do pay the price sometimes because I can’t find the emails I need when I need them. Your approach sounds so much better!

    Karen Putz / DeafMom´s last blog post… Dust Bunnies Captured at Deaf Mom’s House

  3. One more advice: Don’t have two emails from the same project or client in inbox. Keep one and put the other in Current Work. Keep the more important one in the inbox.

    Brad, thank you. Still have to wait to get back full use of my hand for another month.

    Lee, thanks for sharing the Mac side.

    Karen, great start. Keep it up. Try to set a goal of 50 emails per day or something that makes you feel accomplishment without overwhelming yourself.

  4. Oh, Meryl.

    You are making me your biggest fan. The email cleanup procedure is something that always ends up on the back burner – ’cause I never seem to find the time. But, I have learned that by organizing my outlook folders I am actually able to be more productive. As opposed to searching for twenty minutes for that $%#@& email that I KNOW is in there somewhere…

    Cheers

    George

    Tumblemoose´s last blog post… Facebook, writer’s forums and other thoughts

  5. I promise I didn’t pay George to say that 🙂 Thank you, George. If any questions come to mind as you work through inbox, please ask. Glad to help… gotta make my freak obsession with organization useful for others.

  6. On your thumb problem. If you can swing it try purchasing some speech recognition software. You will be pleasantly surprised at how good they are these days. You will also become a lot more efficient since you can speak at least twice as fast as you can type. Dragon Naturally speaking is a good one to look at.

  7. Thanks, Thomas. I ordered it. We’ll see how well it works with my deaf accent. Will report. Just going to be interesting to talk my writing instead of typing… never been good at talking as well as writing.

  8. Meryl,

    A folder for current work is a fabulous idea–as is a follow-up folder for low-priority items that we don’t want to lose track of yet also don’t want clogging up our inboxes.

    It’s so easy to lose control of our inboxes. Thanks for giving us a few highly practical strategies for taming the e-mail monster!

    Jeanne

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