I love filing my e-mails. I just do. I realize that I may be a big nerd for enjoying it, but hey, I file for a living. Are we really that surprised that I like filing my e-mails? I’ll be perfectly honest, there are a few times when my e-mails overwhelm me, and I find that I have over a hundred or more in my inbox, and I get super stressed about that. I feel so much better when I do get all my e-mails sorted. Aside from my nerdy enjoyment of filing e-mails, there is an actual practical purpose behind filing your e-mails. Organizing your Digital life isn’t limited to just your filing system, you can do it with your e-mails as well.
1) Keeps your inbox clean – There is nothing more disconcerting than saying to yourself “Let’s check my e-mail” and finding 50,000 unread e-mails. Personally, I like as clean an inbox as humanly possible if for no other reason than it means that I don’t have that much to deal with. I use my inbox like a to-do list (hyperlink) although it’s not my actual todo list. I treat it more like a “Tasks I have to get done” list. Once the task is complete, I file away the e-mail because the job is done. A great example of this is my house bills. I get them e-mailed to me, when I open the e-mail, I pay the bill, and then file away the e-mail. That way I don’t have to worry about it anymore. I have a separate file for all my bills so that if I need to go back and check them for something I can do so, but it’s out of my inbox once it’s dealt with. I personally believe it’s important to keep your inbox as clean as possible so that when you look at your e-mails, you don’t get depressed or disheartened by how many e-mails you have. How would you be able to deal with the e-mails you get if every time you open your inbox you look at it and say “God, there are too many e-mails to deal with’? I’ll tell you, in this modern world where e-mails are the main method of communication, you’re not going to be getting any fewer e-mails.
2) It’s a method for organizing your thoughts – As I said, I like to think of my e-mail inbox as my task list. Bills come in, and when I pay them, I file them away. When someone contacts me about something I do my best to respond back as quickly as possible, but if I don’t answer I always try to set that e-mail as “unread” so that I know to go back to it. I also like to use my e-mail inbox as a way of keeping subjects that I’m interested in in the foremost of my mind. Sometimes I will have long conversations with people over e-mail which involves a few different topics. When this happens, I try to keep all the e-mails in my inbox until the discussion is done, that way if the other person brings something up I can quickly reference it through a previous e-mail in the chain without having to dig through my files. Once the conversation is made, I just take all the e-mails and file them away.
3) It’s gloriously cathartic – There is, in my opinion, nothing better than crossing something off my todo list. The next best thing is filing away e-mails. I don’t know about you, but when I see many many e-mails in my inbox, I think to myself “holy crap there’s a lot there.” I don’t like having too many e-mails in my inbox because it means that I have more issues to deal with, but with the influx of e-mails that I get every single day (at least 30 a day) sometimes its hard to keep up with everything that shows up in my inbox. That being said I do take a couple hours every month or so to go through and file away what needs to be filed, purge what needs to be purged and sort through what needs to be sorted. When I’m done, I feel so much better knowing that I have A) done a good job and B) cleaned out my e-mails so that when the next batch comes in, it’s not “adding to the pile” but just a few more e-mails that have come in.
Believe it or not, it’s essential to be able to sort through your e-mail on a regular basis. I have come across people who just don’t sort their mail, and I think every time that they should sort it through. To be clear, I tried not sorting through my e-mail. I went for a full year without filing any e-mails whatsoever. My theory was that I would be able to reference any conversation or e-mail that I’d had by either the subject line of the e-mail or the person’s name (through the search bar).
The problem that I didn’t anticipate was that I would search for the subject I was thinking about, and it would not be what the subject line of the e-mail was. I would have to resort to thinking of the person who I was talking to and have to scroll through hundreds of e-mails to get to it. In the end, I found that it was easier to file away my e-mails and make it so that my inbox is a (relatively) empty place.
Do you sort your e-mails? If not would you consider doing it?
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I am a “Filing Nerd” too Jason. If you manage email filing daily, it never becomes a problem (the same way papers on your desk used to stack up at an alarming rate). Different folders make everything manageable – from anywhere if you use the Cloud.