How to get control of a chaotic e-mail inbox
By Pierre Khawand
When was the last time you’ve been
completely off e-mail? Being away
for a few hours or a day isn’t too
bad, but a week? Daunting!
While it is a healthy thing to do from time
to time, I recently experienced the side
effects of being off e-mail for a week when I
saw 12,000 new e-mails pour into my e-
mail inbox after being off e-mail for a week.
Luckily, about half of the e-mail messages
were caught by my spam fi lter and were
automatically placed in my junk mail
folder. Here’s how I handled the rest of the
e-mails in only about an hour and a half
using Microsoft Outlook 2003:
1) I deleted anything that resembled
spam, subscriptions, news, group
messages or offers. These amounted to
a couple of hundred messages.
2) “FYI” e-mails that didn’t require an
action got scanned quickly and moved
into the Archive folder. This is the
folder where I store unimportant
finished messages and refer to them on
an as needed basis.
3) I immediately responded to messages
that were easy to answer quickly.
These included greetings and
miscellaneous follow-ups from friends
and colleagues. Once I answered them,
I dragged them into the Archive folder.
4) For messages that required further
action or thinking (sooner than later),
I flagged them with a red flag. I also
assigned a reminder for time sensitive
messages and set follow-up dates and
times.
5) The remaining not-so-urgent messages
got assigned a blue flag, and where it
was needed, I added reminders with
desired follow-up dates and times.
Using these simple techniques, I
transformed my daunting inbox into an
organized list of messages with red and
blue flags and reminders for time-sensitive
follow-up. But the job didn’t end once I got organized.
The next task was to set time aside, preferably by the end of the day, to handle
the red flagged messages in a timely
manner.
Afraid of being off e-mail during vacations
or holidays? Fear no more. Just budget a
couple of hours when you come back to
sort through your messages systematically
using these tips!
Rather than wait until after vacation, why not apply these e-mail techniques to your inbox now? Many
of our workshop participants report that their inboxes have thousands of messages in them, and
worry that organizing these messages would take a lifetime. Not exactly. If you’re the victim of inbox overload, I recommend that you choose a cut-off date — usually a
month back from today’s date. This allows you to move all the messages that are older than the cut-
off date to an Archive folder. If you need to refer back to them at some point, they’re saved and you
know where to find them. For messages that are more recent than the cut-off
date, you can go through them one by one, flag the unfinished ones, and file
the rest. With just a little effort, you’ll turn an unwieldy inbox into a more
productive tool.
 Founder and CEO of People-OnTheGo, Pierre Khawand’s interest centers on
bridging the gap between technology and people. He founded People-OntheGo to help corporate users
manage e-mail and digital communication tools more effectively.
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As seen in the
Spring 2007 issue of PBWC Connections
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