We’re at the start of a new month and every once and a while we need to spend some quality time with our e-mails. Our task is to get the ones that have been hanging out in your inbox since Christmas into your filing structure (you know, that thingy with the folder icons on the left-hand side of your e-mail client (or app on your computer). If you don’t have any files set up and every e-mail you ever had is in your inbox *Cracks knuckles* don’t worry, we’ll get you sorted in the next post. For now, let’s deal with you lot that have just not filed away your e-mail for a while.
I get it. I do. I understand that it can take time to go through all your e-mail and when you get more and more every single day the avalanche of e-mail that you could be receiving may seem overwhelming. But GUESS WHAT!!!!! It’s not. There are a few quick practices that you can do which make it so much easier to deal with your e-mail
1) Take out the trash….DAILY – One of the things that I see on a regular basis, and I mean multiple of them daily here, is junk email, ads, and other such e-mails that I don’t need to keep. The problem is that because they come in daily, it makes it a lot easier to deal with it on the spot opposed to letting it build up. If you look through your mail once a day and see the stuff that you don’t need, then cleaning out your inbox on a regular basis is a lot easier. Most e-mail clients nowadays can separate notifications and other such junk mail, so going through them is easy anyways.
2) File the bills when you pay them – Most of the bills that I get are through e-mail. Because of that (and the fact that I keep my bills digitally) what I try to do is to match my cloud filing system to my e-mail filing system. That being said whenever I go through and pay my bills I make sure to file them away so that they are out of my inbox.
3) When a conversation is done, file it away! – I have loads of e-mail conversations that go back and forth between people. Something that happens in my family is that we start a conversation and it ends up being a seriously long chain of e-mails. When the chain ends, to avoid the clutter, make sure that you file the whole chain away. This is a quick and easy way to keep your Inbox clear. In my work life what I tend to do is keep open issues or tasks in my inbox. When the issue is resolved, or the job is complete, I move it out of my inbox into its appropriate folder.
4) Sort Group e-mails by the initiator – Speaking of group e-mails what I find that happens to me is that there will be a group e-mail sent out that ends up in a chain of e-mails that could be anywhere from 5 to 10 e-mails long. Some conversations are great to be in and some not so much, but in either case, they have to go somewhere. They can’t all hang out in your inbox. The solution that I use is relatively simple. I look at who sent out the first e-mail and put them all in that person’s folder.
5) Match your e-mail system to your filing system – This can apply to bills, receipts, or other documents that you get e-mailed that you would keep in a digital filing system. If you plan on keeping documents I find that it’s so much easier if you keep the e-mails that they came in, in a similar filing structure. For sure there are exceptions to this rule, if you keep bank statements to different accounts in different folders in your filing system, you don’t necessarily need to keep them in two different folders in your e-mail filing system but having at least a similar structure makes it easier to find those e-mails should it be required.
E-mail maintenance is apart of our everyday lives. We all get e-mail, and its importance is more and more relevant the more we rely on it. Anything that we get e-mailed, be it this month’s set of bills, the newest ad for “a device that will CHANGE YOUR LIFE” or an e-mail from a friend you haven’t heard from in a while, it all needs to go somewhere. Having that filing system maintained makes looking at your inbox every day that much simpler, and much easier.
How often do you clean up your e-mail?
Let me know in the comments section below. If you like this blog post and want to see more, you can follow me on Social Media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @jasonlovefiles) or Subscribe to my blog to get new content delivered directly to your mailbox.
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