Simplifying Your Email Inbox

 
For some reason, email inboxes can be extremely difficult to keep organized whether it's an inbox for your job or your personal email.  Luckily, the advice in the blog post can be used for ANY inbox as long as the basics are followed. But the big thing is that your inbox should also be viewed as a filing system and a to do list.

Change How You Think of Your Inbox

Like I just said, rather than think of your inbox as an actual inbox, consider it a filing system with a to do list on top.  The only things you should leave in your inbox are things that need action.  Otherwise, emails should be filed into your category folders or deleted if they don't need to be kept.  Getting into this habit of thinking this way will make you also adopt the habit of addressing, filing, and deleting things right away.  I no longer have to go through and carefully delete my sent emails once a day. I delete them as soon as I send them if they don't need kept.

Start with Big Categories

We tend to isolate emails by the little details in them and that can make it hard to know where to look for it later. Now the sheer amount of emails we usually keep is a whole different issue but I'll address that shortly.  Start thinking not of how you currently use your inbox and categories but how you'd like to use it. Remember - you won't keep everything after we get done with this so keep it vague. Rather than 5 different receipts folders for 5 different types of expenses, just keep one receipts folder for example. 

There will also be sub categories.  Maybe you process invoices for your job. Rather than one big invoices folder, you will have subfolders under the main one that go by vendor or type of invoice.  You may further need to categorize things by year. 

 

You want to make it easy for you to get where you need to in order to find an email or even to file one away so keep that in mind as you set up categories and remember you can always make more later or refine things if it's not working out the way you had hoped.

 

Keep Subcategories Sensible and Simple

With the subcategories you really do want to keep it sensible and simple. Getting too detailed is just silly because how many emails can you have about one very detailed thing.   For example if you have a folder for expenses and one for refunds, why not just have it all in one folder.  If you aren't getting refunds very often, what's the sense in having a folder for it. It just makes one more folder to scroll past.

 

Delete the Excess

Once you have a pretty decent setup with your folder system you want to go through each existing category folder you have and check each email one by one.  First you want to determine if you even need it.  Then you should consider if it belongs in the category it's in.  And finally you want to determine if an email is the best way to save the content.  If you save emails that contain guidance on how to do something and you regularly reference it, why not create an instructions document for yourself where you can have everything in one place and just update it as new emails come to you with updated guidance.  

 

Most of what I kept for work emails were instructions and guidance.  Now, I am in the habit of updating the instructions as soon as the new guidance hits my inbox. Sometimes I may reference it in my instructions document by saying something like "per email from (NAME HERE) on (date here)".  But I've found once I have the information I need in my document, I have no use for the email. If the email contained links then I put that in my guidance documents too. This way I always know where to go. 

 

Work on Future Habits

Get in the habit of filing things right away.  After you address an email, do you want to keep it or can you delete it? Does it need filed? Do this stuff right away so the only things that sit in your inbox are items you have to complete.  If you have a paper to do list or another type of to do list, you don't even have to keep most emails in your inbox since you can keep up with your to do list elsewhere and if you need the email regarding it, you can find it in your neatly organized filing system. 

 

Also, stop keeping everything.  I promise you probably haven't referred to most of the stuff you keep.  And if you did, again consider making it into a document on resources. If you keep emails that contain information on where to find resources on a topic, just put that info into a guidance document. 

You will absolutely find that some things need to be refined after you first simplify everything. It took me a month or so when I did this for my work and personal emails but finally everything is the way it works best for me and it's no longer overwhelming. 

 

Happy simplifying!

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