How Do You Manage Your Emails?

Have you ever felt overwhelmed when you open your email inbox because of the volume of emails you have? Well, you’re not alone. It is quite difficult to know what emails require your attention more than others if they’re all in the order they’re received with no indication of priority. In order to optimize your energy and time on which emails need your attention most, you will want to set up an email management system that works for you. Here are a few options you should consider and their pros and cons.

Folders

Not all emails are created equally. Most of the emails we receive can be split into separate categories of importance in relation to our jobs with ones being not useful at all. When you create a folder, you can label it with one of your most common categories and move your email from the inbox to that folder after you have read the email. Here are the instructions on how to create folders in Outlook & Gmail, two popular email softwares: Create a folder in Outlook, Create a label in Gmail. 

Pros

• Folders make it easier to focus on those emails that you really need your attention

• Folders can help quickly differentiate your emails by categories instead of all of them together, uncategorized, in the inbox folder

Cons

• Creating too many folders can oversaturate your inbox making it harder to manage

• Wasting time in deciding which folder to manually place a certain email 

Rules

Having folders alone can take up a lot of time because of the manual work involved in moving over each individual email. This is where rules ‘rule’. By setting up email rules, you can automate the work of moving a specific email into a folder. You will need to set up specific criteria for each rule. Here are the instructions on how to create rules in Outlook & Gmail: Create rules in Outlook, Create automatic labels in Gmail.  

Pros

• Rules can help you manage your inbox automatically instead of manually moving over emails to each folder

• Rules can be as specific as you want them to be

Cons

• If you don't regularly check your folders, you can miss important unread emails that were automatically sorted based on rules

Follow-up Reminder

Even after your emails have been automatically organized into folders, you may still feel overwhelmed as to which emails need to be answered and by when. One easy way to tackle this challenge is to use a follow-up reminder for the emails that require your input by a specific deadline. Here are the instructions on how to create follow-up reminders in Outlook & Gmail: Create follow-up reminder in Outlook , Create nudge in Gmail. 

Pros

• Follow-up reminders can help your accountability when you need to perform your job in a timely manner in response to an email

• Follow-up reminders can help you feel confident that you’re staying ahead of specific deadlines 

Cons

• Not regularly checking your email can make you miss these notifications 

In conclusion, having an email management system can help you spend less time in your email inbox and more time doing other tasks that require your focus and energy. What are some other options to manage your emails that I missed? Let me know in the comments.