There are quite a few things that you can be doing nowadays. One of the things that you should be considering to keep yourself organized it making sure that your e-mail stays organized. I’ve seen as many different systems for managing e-mail as there are people. I’ve even come across a couple of people who keep all their e-mail in their inbox. When I think about that, it gives me a bit of an eye twitch. I love having my e-mail sorted so that I can find anything I want if I need it. I have a few different things that I do in my system that may help you as well.
1) Subfolders are your friend – One of the things that I like about all e-mail systems is that they all come with the ability to make subfolders. The reason I like them is that it allows you the ability only to keep the e-mails you need in your inbox. My philosophy when it comes to what is in my inbox is that if I have any open issues or things that I need to deal with, I will keep them in my inbox. Once I’ve dealt with it (as an example, Once I’ve paid a bill that gets e-mailed to me), it gets filed in the appropriate folder. It makes it easy because you know that if it’s in your inbox, it’s something you need to deal with. If it’s not, then you don’t have to focus on it.
2) Try to Mirror your filing system – One of the greatest opportunities that you have with your e-mail filing system is to mirror your actual filing system. More and more, people are getting things sent to them through e-mail. Correspondence, bills educational matters, all these things used to be sent in a hard company format. Now because it’s all digital all the time, we need to be able to manage the documents in the same way that we maintain our e-mails. It makes sense for me simply because I don’t have to think about where I file things, depending on which system I’m using. I can see how it would be frustrating to try and manage (to say nothing of navigating) two different filing systems. For sure, there will be some e-mail that you get, which either won’t have things that should go into your filing system, and that’s perfectly fine. All of my correspondence with friends and family doesn’t have a place in my digital filing system, but it certainly does in my e-mail filing system.
3) Make yourself a cleaning schedule – I know that I said that when I deal with an e-mail, I file it away, and I do. The problem is when you are dealing with twenty or thirty issues at once. You don’t have time to file every single e-mail all the time. Something else that happens to me is that I will have an “open issue” for a month or so, and all those e-mails are still in my inbox, looking all cluttered. It drives me a little crazy. To avoid pulling your hair out, It’s important to set aside some time in your week for cleaning out your inbox. If you don’t have time to do it every single day, that’s perfectly fine, neither do I. I will take some time on Friday’s and ensure that my inbox is as empty as it possibly can be. You can do any day of the week you like; I like Fridays because it means that I can start the following week fresh and a “relatively” empty inbox. As for ongoing issues cluttering up your inbox, what I do is set up a subfolder to deal with that specific issue, so that I can keep an eye on such things. I had a house insurance issue a while back and had to deal with my insurance company throughout a couple of months. It got resolved, so it’s no big deal, but while I was in the middle of it, I had a subfolder for that specific issue so that my inbox would stay clear.
I like a well-managed e-mail filing system. I want to be clear; I have tried walking on the wild side. I worked for a full year keeping all my e-mail in my inbox, but after a year, I couldn’t do it anymore. If you follow the ideas that I’ve presented here, you should be well on your way to having a logically laid out e-mail filing system. Something that we can all aspire to.
How do you sort your e-mail?
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