If you’re anything like me, then you receive a ton of email every day from numerous sources. Your inbox contains hundreds, maybe even thousands of messages, with dozens or even hundreds of new ones being added to it daily. Hopefully you are not using the size of your inbox or the number of emails you receive daily to brag to your colleagues about your importance. At our company, the IT department dubbed me the ‘Inbox world-record holder’ because I had thousands of messages and an Outlook.pst file that was just bursting at the seams (not bragging, and not proud of this!). So, I picked up Bit Literacy1 by Mark Hurst, looking for help with this. The information and steps below are described in much more detail in his excellent book, which also goes well beyond email overload management.
Step 1: Start treating your inbox like a true inbox (i.e. what it was meant to be: the application metaphor for the metallic-grill box marked Inbox which needs to be emptied continuously), and stop using it as a todo list, filing system, calendar, bookmark list, address book, you name it. The inbox is a temporary holding area for email, until you move it, delete it or turn it into something else (e.g. an appointment).
Step 2: Become disciplined and empty your inbox at least once a day. Empty means completely empty, with no more emails in it. Yes, you will have to face that dreaded blank space in Outlook (or your favorite email client) and wonder what’s wrong.
Step 3: Personal email - read, save the ones the really matter to you elsewhere, store any attached pictures that matter elsewhere, print it out if you have to, but then delete it from your inbox.
Step 4: Spam (ha ha, my favorite: you shouldn’t of course have any of this in your inbox!) – if any gets through, delete it immediately, and if your email client allows it be a good citizen and report it to your anti-spam vendor so that they can improve their detection rates.
Step 5: Newsletters – assuming you still care about them, at least skim the titles of the contained articles and read the interesting ones if you have time. Then, delete the newsletter email. If you are no longer interested or never were interested, then either block the newsletter using your anti-spam software (if it is from a disreputable source), or just unsubscribe if it’s from a reputable company that uses proper email marketing techniques.
Step 6: Automated emails from internal tools – peruse them quickly, then delete them. They are simple FYIs and the actual information will also reside with the internal tool.
Step 7: General FYI messages that are not actionable - quite simply: read carefully, then delete. If it was a meeting announcement, then either create the calendar item in your calendar software, or wait for the invite from the host. If they are important project milestone emails, you may want to store them in a project-related folder.
Step 8: TODOs – the most important items in your email. Use the 2-minute rule: if you can complete the task in the next 2 minutes, then do it, and delete the email. If it will take longer, then move the email to your TODO list, but remove it from your inbox.
On my side, I’ve taken my Outlook.pst file from about 15 Gig (I know, don’t ask, I keep way too much stuff), to less than 8 Gig. I still have work to do, but am getting better.
As I mentioned, the book gets into much more detail, including how to go through your existing inbox and empty it out. So, do you have any tips and tricks for managing email overload? What are your favorite tools or techniques for doing this? What tools are missing that would help you with your email overload?
References:
1. Mark Hurst writes an excellent blog called Good Experience, which focuses on good customer, user and human experience. He has also written the great book titled ‘Bit Literacy’, about how to be productive in the Information Age and manage Email Overload. I highly recommend both.
Seems like the folks at GigaOm liked this post: http://gigaom.com/collaboration/email-information-overload/
Interesting indeed, I find that certain users consider Outlook to be a long term storage system rather than a communication system!
They complain when their mailbox is full, but never think to empty their deleted items, remove large attachments etc!
I’ve come across sent items folders with lierally thousands of emails within them.
It only takes a bit of discipline to keep your mail in order! And Outlook runs so much better when its not bursting at the seams!
Much of this is down to lack of user education, some just laziness on the part of the user.
@David Nicholls
I’ve been a culprit in that as well. In the series I outline my efforts to decrease my pst file size, and I have not yet attacked the Sent Items folder.
Thank you for reading.