This is the follow-up in the organizing your everyday life series. How to keep control of that pesky in-box filling up with e-mails.
Get a spamfilter. Getting a spam filter, either by installing thirdparty filtering software, or using an e-mail client with a built in filter is a lifesaver. Most filters greatly reduce the number of spams you have to manually have to move to the trash folder. Most filters also allow you to “teach” it about the particulars of spam flowing your way. So over time the amount of spam should be greatly reduced.
How does this help you.. well even if you are proficient in spotting spam mails it still takes time to find and remove them all. So even though it doesnt take a lot of time in itself its gonna amount to a big amount of wasted time just doing junk mail sorting. Why not let your computer do most of the work.
I reccomend using Thunderbird for your e-mail client on windows, as personally i find the spam filter great! I get around 1-2 spam mails pr day at the most. Where it automatically sort away a large part of them. So far i have never had a false positive (legit mail, caught in spam filter).
Make folders. Making folders outside the in-box is another great, but overlooked tip. Most people keep all their e-mail in the in-box. Why bother moving it they might think. The reasons for actually sorting are as follows:
- Only new e-mails in the in-box
- Easier to find old messages according to folders
- pseudo to do list
- archiving
When you make your in-box exactly that you will only have new, unanswered mails in there. What i do is make a general archive folder for stuff i want to keep but that doesn’t have a specific category. Then i make several other folders for various topics and subjects i feel Im getting. Examples are a ‘jokes’, ‘important’, ‘client work’, ‘university’ and ‘work’.
This allows me to have a virtual to do list in my in-box. I have only unanswered mails in the in-box and when I am done either replying or processing whatever a mail from the in-box contains i will move it accordingly (or simply delete it). This keeps the in-box clean and only filled with unprocessed mails.
The final point was to archive mails, which generally allows you to faster locate mail according to folder topics. Example if i want to find the newest funny joke image my father sent me, i simply have to look in the ‘jokes’ folder. Furthermore i can keep my university stuff in a single folder.
What i personally think makes people overuse the in-box is simply that they don’t believe they actually have any use for folders. Or that they overuse them when trying it out and make too many folders for themselves. Don’t make folders according to what people send to you, but rather instead of various topics the mails might fall under.
Generalize the folders. ‘Archiving’ might be a perfect folder for simply keeping mails you don’t yet know what to do with. Perhaps a folder named ‘2005’ might be a great subfolder here. Making subfolders can make your e-mail archive even more organized should you ever need to walk through them.
Finally don’t underestimate the search function of your mail client. Personally i try to keep my mails organized so i don’t have to use it, but if you frequently have to search for your mail using some folders might be a good idea, or perhaps rethinking the naming scheme of them 😀
Hope this helps keep those in-boxes clean and a little more organized! 😀