I don’t know about you but although I sort through things, save details away as I go and move my communications trail out of my inbox, come the end of year there seems to be an awful lot of emails accumulated there. Yes, I know those systems ‘S’ and ‘Green’ folk will just scratch their heads and perhaps chuckle at us ‘Blues’ and ‘Red’s’ that we cannot have regularly reduced our inbox counter to under 20.
But, I am not a ‘Green’ or ‘S’, and I get hundreds of emails every day – literally. Away with the excuses now, let us just say half the population falls into the group that does have a pile-up of emails in your inbox come the end of year, and despite all good intention, there is too many to look through, here is what to do.
First of all, decide that you want to curb the masses and create some head-space both in your head and inside the digital head – yes your computer. Once, that is done, and you have made a commitment to yourself to tackle the email mount – getting started is key.
Step 1
Search through from the bottom up. If you have not needed the contact and content from an email that has sat there all year, you are most likely not going to in a hurry. So, highlight the lot up until you find something of relevance, then look at these so-called important emails, and delete the rest.
Start with key search terms like subscriptions to industry newsletters and those you only subscribed to get the free download. In future, unsubscribe the moment you have received the download – unless of course, you are genuinely interested.
Unsubscribe, delete the lot or if you think they are of value, stay subscribed but get rid of a bunch of them. I am sure you can access anything relevant and timely on their website and before long you will have dozens more of their e-news filling your inbox.
Step 2
Those emails of relevance, trails that you might want to reuse or follow up, push those into a folder, maybe call one ‘To Sort’ ‘To Follow Up’ or anything relevant that is topical – essentially moving these all out of your inbox. Find senders with whom you have little to do now, but did have a lot of exchange earlier in the year. Find all the emails, scan loosely over the most recent or relevant and most likely when in doubt – click the delete button, you won’t believe how freeing this is.
Step 3
Personal emails. Now, if you are anything like most people, you will have duplicates of messaging going on across text, messenger, phone and email. And, unless you are a good systems-nerd won’t have deleted trails as you go. Whether it is your ex’s chasing up emails of something rather, the reminders from your partner to get this or that done on your way home from the office, or long exchanges from those days when you where busy chatting with each other about the meaning of life or how hard your heart beats for each other rather than do actual work – well, all these would have outlived their due date. Simple treatment is – highlight and delete.
Step 4
Only really keep the most important, relevant, current and hard-to-retrace communications, lift these into a folder titled ‘Important Past Mail’ or straight into topical folders – otherwise, be ruthless and highlight, do a quick (and I mean quick) scan as of there is anything of value, give it one-and-a-half seconds of contemplation and then ‘poof’ let them all disappear in an instant.
By now, your inbox should look a lot less crowded and you feel a lot lighter. Letting is not easy, but feels great!
While the inbox might just be the starting point with oodles of documents and desktop saved screenshots yet to go, at least you have made some space for the incoming, so with the new year – new and fresh business can actually come in the front door.
Key Secret – is maintenance. Unsubscribe from everything that is not essential; reduce email writing/sending and back and forth wherever possible, delete things as soon as they are done or transferred, and make a habit of picking up the phone for those things that can be done on the phone.
Not only will this build great rapport with colleagues, clients and stakeholders, but give you a break from the screen you are staring at all day long, but it will make both your and their day. Often, the time it takes to write a sensible email in the right tone and with all the key questions, a call could have been done and dusted. Plus, you get the answers straight away, rather than wait for a reply or worse have to go back and forth with niceties and rehashing the same question three times.
I think you get the idea. Before the year kicks in properly, create some inbox space, and make a commitment to minimise emails and manage those that come in promptly – delete, delete, delete – keep only the essential stuff.
Happy inbox clearing!