In this series, I will be walking through tools, systems, and routines that work for me in various areas of my life.
One area that I’m always working at to tweak and improve is how I organize my life. I work for myself and work from the house, so if I don’t keep myself organized, things begin to fall apart.
Whether you own your own business, are a stay-at-home parent, an average teenager, or a college student with a full load of classes and a part time job, you have to stay organized. A key part of any good organization system is EMAIL. So today, I’ll share some ideas regarding email organization and what works for me:
- Keep your inbox empty - I started this a few years ago, and while it was a huge challenge initially, it’s been well worth it. Having an empty inbox helps my mind to not become overwhelmed or stressed by the volume of emails. I don’t have to stress about whether I responded to one or applied an action that was needed…if there is an email in my inbox, it just means I haven’t dealt with that yet. But as much as possible, I try to keep my inbox empty.
- Use sorting folders - In order to keep my inbox empty, I have about 60 email folders set up within my email program. Personally, I use Mail within Mac, but I used to do this in Outlook for PC as well. Basically I have a folder for any and every type of subject and after I’ve dealt with an email, I put it into the correct folder so if I do need to refer back to it later, it’s there.
- Set times for checking email - This is one I’ve just started and have to work at, but I’m trying to check email only 3 times each day. I’m a recovering email-aholic who needed to check and respond to email all day, everyday. In order to maintain some sense of balance, that system won’t work. I’ve set things up where I check email at 9am, noon, and 3pm and that’s it. At some point, I may drop down to 2 times each day, but for now 3 will work.
- Turn off auto send/receive - My former email system was to just to have auto send/receive on all day and simply deal with email as it came in. The challenge was I could never focus on the task at hand because that stupid ding would go off every few minutes alerting me that a new email had arrived. And like Pavlov’s dog, I felt the need to open the inbox and check the email every time I heard the ding. So now the auto send/receive button has disabled.
- Don’t let email control your life - Far too many people are addicted to email. We have the need to please others, so we have the need to respond to peoples’ emails at the moment that it arrives. I’m trying to learn to just let it sit there. It will be there tomorrow.
Tomorrow, I’ll talk more about how I organize my calendar..
What tips can you share for how you organize email?
