Life Contained's Personal Productivity Blog

Email Inbox: Going from 5K to 30 in :30

  

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As a Chicago professional organizer specializing in helping business professionals get organized at work, I've seen inboxes approaching six figures. Recently I helped one gal go painlessly and without kicking from 29K to fewer than five emails in one productivity session. You can produce impressive numbers similar to this by following one simple rule:

Separate Action Emails from Reference Ones

Using the following image as a guide. Begin to think of your email area in two parts:

• ACTION: the inbox, where emails requiring action are stationed including
  

• New emails you need to open & process

• Opened emails acting as reminders for action (I don't always promote using the inbox as a to-do list, but for the purposes of going from 5K to 30 in :30, allowing action in the inbox is a wise intermediate step)

• REFERENCE: the personal folders, where reference emails no longer requiring action are stationed

With this rule, I bet you can go from roughly 5K to 30 in about a half an hour...without too much suffering. Here's how:

1. Realize you have a jumbled mixture of emails, not at all organized, sitting in your inbox.

2. Understand all I want you to do is to move that jumbled mixture across the line that divides your inbox from your personal folder area.

3. Get a grip. Reassure yourself crossing this line means nothing. You can continue to sort that mixture according to From, Subject or Received when you need to find something.
   

4. Create a "1 General Reference" folder in your personal folder tree.

5. Select everything in your inbox three weeks or older & move them all to the 1 General Reference folder. (Feel free to adjust the timing to two weeks, but don't adjust in the other direction. Do not organize those emails by filing them into other folders. It's not worth it!!!! You're currently getting along without that organization living out of your inbox, so why apply the organization when you know you can live without it?!!)

6. Go through remaining emails, filing things not requiring action into the 1 General Reference folder and leaving all those requiring action in your inbox.

7. Celebrate and rejoice in knowing you can see all the things that require your attention.

If you'd like a little more personal attention to make this happen, give us a call @ 630.803.6650. We'd be thrilled to help you see inbox white space.