Email Management Strategies
Managing your inbox can easily consume huge chunks of your time, but it doesn’t have to. Really efficient people can move things, like a hot potato, out of the inbox and keep a handle on things. Lots of people think that you need to buy a really expensive email management system, but you don’t. Sure, they have some sweet add-ons, but a fancy app won’t solve your problem if you don’t have good email habits as a starting place.
Here are a few tips to help you get and keep your inbox under control:
Consider committing to an INBOX ZERO approach: We are big fans of spending a weekend blitz and getting your inbox down to INBOX ZERO - i.e., there are zero emails in your inbox. It’s a big undertaking but it makes managing your inbox so much less stressful on a day-to-day basis. You will need to delete things, unsubscribe rigorously, tuck things away in folders, and pull tasks into your to-do list. Then you will need to hot-potato things out of your inbox quickly in order to maintain inbox zero. The benefit of this strategy is that you never have more than 20 emails to tackle at any given time if you are good about maintaining this system.
Have all of your email addresses filter into one mail system. The reason to have one system is so that you can have one mail hub to track all messages and you don’t have to log into multiple systems and lose stuff.
Unsubscribe from everything you don’t read. You have to be ruthless about this. Any store, newsletter, whatever - if you don’t read it, unsubscribe. You don’t want to have fluff cluttering your inbox. Choose, instead, to follow them on Instagram or other social media outlets instead so you can choose when you want to go in and explore.
Create a follow-up folder. Having a follow-up folder, allows you to quickly triage your inbox and immediately respond to the emails that require little-to-no thinking without forgetting to circle back to the emails that require a little care and time. Keep emails in your follow-up folder until a loop has been closed. For example, if you need to meet with someone and a meeting time has not yet been selected, keep the email in your follow-up folder as a reminder to follow up until the invite is on your calendar.
Pull tasks out of email and into your to-do lists: Instead of using your inbox to remind you to do something, consider pulling it out of your email and logging it on your to-do list instead.
Create other folders for frequent flyers in your inbox. Are there customers or direct reports that you email with frequently? Consider creating a folder for all of their emails to go into once they no longer need a response. It’s a great way to track things and get them out of your main inbox.
Be thoughtful about your alerts. Once you have your inbox cleared out and you no longer get emails you don’t want, you may want to consider setting your notifications to be badge only. That way you can keep your focus if you need to on other things and quickly glance to see if you have new messages you need to respond to. Alerts and notifications with noise can be distracting and annoying, especially when they keep interrupting calls.
Pick your email time carefully. You don’t want email to suck up your best thinking time, so make sure to be cognizant of when you go in and clean out your follow-up folder and when you ignore your inbox instead. Consider setting aside the first few minutes of every day for triage and follow-up - as well as the last few minutes of each day. Then only let email management happen in the mini-minutes in between meetings. Be careful to make sure that it’s not your most precious time for deep thinking.
A note about Super Human:
We were pretty hesitant to try out Super Human because it’s expensive ($30/month). However, we’ve got to be honest: it’s a really nice experience. You could probably get Gmail or another email system to do all of the things it does - but its UX is quite simple, beautiful, and almost delightful.
It won’t solve all of your inbox problems because you have to maintain the system, however, it’s designed thoughtfully to help you manage the flow and avoid dropping a ball. Despite the price tag, we really like it. They also have a great onboarding that gets you acquainted with how it works and all of the shortcuts to speed things up.
Wrapping up
You’ll never manage your inbox without a bit of discipline, so it’s important to try out a new system for a little while before changing it. Commit to a plan for a week or so and then iterate until you find a rhythm that works for you.