How to Process your Email Inbox
Email. Lots of people hate it. Some people don’t even really use it because it’s become such a nightmare for them to manage.
Do you currently have 34.951 unread emails in your inbox? If so, this is for you.
Below are types of emails you receive and a discussion of how to deal with each type.
Marketing emails - I recommend unsubscribing from ALL of these. In my opinion (and experience) the less marketing emails you see, the less likely you are to buy things. Go figure. More importantly, your are less likely to buy things that you don’t actually want or need. If you really need or want something you won’t need an email to prompt you to buy it. Some people might wonder, what about the coupon codes and the notifications about sales? If you really need or want something, you won’t need it to go on sale before purchasing it (this is controversial, I know). I believe in getting the best price for something once I have determined that I actually need it or want it, and I will happily use a coupon code or shop around for the best deal (or use an extension like Honey to search the web for promo codes). You get plenty of marketing messages in today’s world. Don’t invite them into your email inbox. (On a side note, if you LOVE a brand and want to support them, you can always opt back in to their (and only their) marketing emails. However, I recommend getting rid of ALL marketing emails for at least a month and see how you feel (and how much easier it is to process your email!).)
HOW DO YOU QUICKLY AND EASILY UNSUBSCRIBE FROM MARKETING EMAILS?
Manual/Old School Method: Set your timer for 15 minutes and go on a rampage. Start from the top and when you encounter a marketing email, copy the sender’s email address and paste it in the search bar of your email inbox. Delete all emails from the search. Repeat. Continue 15 minute sessions until you are free of marketing emails (you can do this in one day or over the course of a week, whatever aligns with your goals and schedule).
Automated: Sign up for a service. Unroll.me is a free service that will do this for you (plus the video at this link is entertaing :) I’ve never used it, but worst case scenario is that it doesn’t do a good job and your back to the Manual/Old School Method. To me, it seems like it’s worth a try.
Calendar Items - BIrthday Invitations, Work Events, Dentist Appointments. These should live in your calendar, not your email inbox. I suggest corralling all of these in a folder. That way, when you need to write things down in your calendar, you won’t have to sift through your email, they will all be waiting for you in one, neat folder. I recommend keeping these items in this folder until the date has passed. That way, if the email contains info you need at the time of the event (address, zoom link, etc.) it will also be really easy to find that info. After the date has passed, delete the email. If you use a digital calendar, sometimes you can add the event to your calendar in one click, then delete the email.
Reference items - This could be receipts, plane tickets, newsletters, etc. Anything you want to keep and refer back to at a later time. If it is something that you can easily download (like a school calendar) you always have the option to keep it outside of your email (like in a google drive). I include newsletters here. If you enjoy subscribing to a newsletter or digital publication, you can create a special “To Read Later” folder in your email. When you have time to read them later they will be waiting for you in one, neat folder. Although my predication is that they never get read :| If it is a digital publication, blog post, or otherwise searchable on the internet, Consider deleting the email and moving on. If the particular article comes to mind later, you can search for them on the internet and ready it that way (with out the distraction of having it in your inbox, clogging up your email)
Action Items - For this you have to know yourself. In an ideal world, you would have a working lists of tasks you need to complete. If you do, you can extract the action item(s) from the email and add it to your task list. If there is still reference information in the email, file it in your reference folder and move on.
If you don’t have a working list of tasks, keep it in your inbox and it will be there for you until you complete the task (at which point you can either file in your reference folder or delete the email.) The draw back to this approach is it will always be looking at you, nagging you, mocking you, possibly distracting you whenever you look at your email. Maybe one of many good reasons to maintina a master list of tasks.
What about emails that require a reponse? In my experience, not that many emails require a reponse. Most emails that require a response also require an action (follow process outlined above). If you have an email that you need to respond (and you can not respond very quickly during your email processing time), you can:
Create a folder “To Respond”
Leave it in your Inbox until you respond
I don’t recomment keeping folders like “school”, “work”, “xyz project”. I recommend filing emails in these broad categories. These categories closely align with the purpose/action associate with the email. So you should have the following folders:
“Reference”
“Calendar”
Maybe a “To Be Read” folder for personal newsletters and such.
Maybe a “To Respond” folder
So the actual process (once all marketing emails are gone) should be much quicker and painless now that you have a plan for each type of email. Remember this is just the “processing” portion of email. Your goal with processing is not to address everything immediately, but rather get a feel for what events and tasks you have on the horizon.
Ideally, you would have a set time to check your email each day. Depending on the typical urgency of the emails you receive, you may have 1-3 times a day you set aside 5 minutes to process email. Set an alarm(s) for the time(s) of the day you want to check your email and a timer for 5 minutes. (Note: if you are obsessed with inbox zero and check their email every 10 minutes and typically don’t receive urgent emails, I challenge you to only check you email once a day. You can turn off mail notirication or put a time limit on your email app to help).
Did I miss a “type” of email? What questions do you have?
