The 5 Rules for Email Organization
Most of us begin the day by refreshing the inbox… waiting for that rush of dopamine. We use it in the bathroom, while working and cooking. Email is an omnipresent figure in our lives, Filipa 20: 1-8.
Still, most people have never really figured out email. Rather than seeking its optimisation and reducing the time spent using it, most opt to read the same emails multiple times (without processing what arrives), deleting unwanted newsletters constantly and complaining about those still waiting for their response. It’s a brave new world.
I’m not pretending to be the email queen. And to be completely honest, email doesn’t stress me much because I follow five basic rules that help me minimize the time spent managing email.
The First Rule: Don’t Reply
I don’t reply unless it is necessary. Yup, it sounds harsh. But isn’t it harsh to reply to emails that don’t require a reply? You are making other people read your reply when there is nothing to reply to.
When you make an Amazon purchase, you are (hopefully) not replying to the order confirmation email, right? Why would you reply to what does not require an answer? For me, this includes topics that are already dealt with or to the guy who wanted to write a guest post on my blog about dog care. Neither are going to receive a reply.
But how can you know if the email requires a reply? It’s simple. If you are questioning if it needs a response or not, chances are it does not.
This is the first rule because it can save you the greatest amount of time. Besides, and in the words of Peter Drucker,
“Nothing is less Productive than doing what should not be done at all”.
The second rule: Unsubscribe
Unsubscribe to every newsletter you immediately eliminate. At the moment, I subscribe to a few newsletters only. And I know exactly which ones.
But it was not always like this. In fact, before using unroll.me (which allows you to unsubscribe to newsletters in one click), I was registered in more than 100 newsletters! I was shocked. Every website I ever purchased from was a part of the list too.
If you spend a significant per cent of your email time deleting unwanted newsletters, “unsubscribe”. You can always resubscribe if you miss it.
But please, why receiving daily emails from a newborn clothing shop when your son is 12 years old?
The third rule: Sort
The third rule consists of sorting emails through different folders. And before telling you how, let me say this: Unless you have one of the most complex lives on the planet, the fewer folders, the better. You don’t need 15, 10 or 5 folders in your email. Hence, maybe you don’t even need more than 2. So, before continue reading, ask yourself if you need something too complicated.
Ok. I am assuming your answer was a clear no. I have 3 email folders to sort through: Inbox, Reply and Archive. I don’t have a folder called “Personal”, another “Business”, or “Newsletter”. Why bother if my current system is working so well?
It would be a waste of time to spend more time sorting emails through folders than actually replying. And, until today, I never felt the need to add any additional folder.
It might happen that you have opened and re-read the same email more than 3 times. This is a waste of time and will continue to happen without a system to filter through the noise. With different folders, you read an email once, sort it through the proper folder and deal with it now or later.
A key rule is sticking to the “2 Minute-Rule” popularized by David Allen, the author of “Getting Things Done”. If any email takes less than 2 minutes to reply to, do it immediately. Otherwise, put it into the proper folder.
The 3 following folders have exactly what I’m looking for… simplicity and practicability:
First, the “Inbox” is where all the emails arrive and where I sort them;
The “Reply” folder contains emails waiting for a reply, which I haven’t yet replied to;
Finally, the “Archive” contains all the emails that don’t require a reply and the ones I’ve replied to already.
The fourth rule: Inbox Zero
The fourth rule is having a (nearly) inbox zero. At the moment, my inbox is not zero. It does have a couple of emails, which I haven’t decided what to do with (mainly partnerships or requests). If this is not the sign of a productivity fraud, I don’t know what else would be.
But guess what? I’m totally fine with an almost inbox zero. I’m not freaking out. And I’m not sleeping less because of it either. Unless you call me a productivity fraud, my sleeping pattern is likely to be kept the same.
Anyway, I still know that most people are far, far, far, from the number zero. Five years ago, my inbox had more than 10,000 emails. And yet, I reached inbox zero in three days. It was an interesting task to sort 10,000 emails at the time. But I don’t regret it. In fact, there were 3 simple steps I took for inbox zero:
Delete: I deleted all emails that had nothing relevant for the future. As you might relate, the majority. 10,000 emails seem like a lot of stuff to go through. But most are trash.
Archive: The rest of the to-save emails were archived and are still there until this day.
Reply: From the 10,000, only a few were moved to the “Reply” folder. I chose not to reply to emails sent years before.
It feels good to reach the epic milestone of “inbox zero”. But if you’re not really interested in doing so, I get it. It’s not really that big of a deal.
The fifth rule: Block Email Time
A lot of people believe they must refresh their inbox many times per day. And when I say many times, I mean dozens. Unfortunately, even a quick 20-second email glance can undermine your ability to focus and produce great work. Anyway, I’ve found a way of decreasing this crazy obsession with email without being too radical…
Scheduling email time is the fifth rule of maintaining a proper equilibrium. Rather than making every time, email time, block short periods of your day to check and reply to emails. The goal is to restrict email usage to those specific periods of the day rather than all periods. Even if you define 6 short time blocks to check email, it is probably better than your current situation.
Even though I rarely check email while working, I am still guilty of refreshing my inbox many times throughout the day. So, we’re in this fight together.
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