I have a helpful system for managing my e-mail, but I thought I would put this one out there to THE CAPRANICA readers to see what systems you are using. How do you manage your e-mail in-box? This article has some helpful thoughts. Give me some of yours. I’ll post my approach (or my former one if you have some more helpful ideas) after we have a few responses here.
I will publish my own approach to handling e-mail clutter next week.
Unclutterer » Archive » Simple strategies to clear email clutter From Gina Trapani of Lifehacker
Hi Brett, great to see you last Saturday. The parables class by Mobley was great. A few of my email strategies:
1) I try very hard to keep my email inbox clean and uncluttered. Most are actioned immediately, and I rarely have emails sitting that are over a week old.
2) I have about 20 folders. If I find myself not using a folder very often, I will delete it and move those emails into another category.
3) I hardly ever permanently delete emails, as I sometimes find myself looking for correspondence from over a year ago.
4) The only folder that I have created ‘rules’ for is my Prayer folder. I receive several e-newsletters from IMB, NAMB, California Family Council, etc., that go directly into this prayer folder and are waiting for me when I go to prepare our weekly prayer bulletin.
Stephen, it was great to see you also Saturday.
About how many e-mail do you receive a day?
After you deal with an e-mil do you then move it to a folder?
Can you list some of the folders you have?
I receive maybe 15-20 emails a day. When working an administrative job out in the secular workforce, it was much higher. Perhaps 40-50 on average.
On very busy days, I would take about 15 minutes just to scan through all my emails and prioritize them (needs urgent response, needs action today, needs action in 2-3 days, no action needed). Sometimes, I would print them out and sort through the hard copies.
Yes, I usually move emails into folders after taking action. Or, if I’m not ready to respond/take action immediately, I will jot the item on my ‘to do’ tablet and move the email to folder.
As a pastor, my folders are basically categorized according to ministry. E.g. deacons, discipleship, missions, prayer, secretary, youth. I also have a folder called “To print/distribute” to save copies of emails that contain important correspondence and need to be distributed to people in the church who don’t have email.
What email tricks do you use?
Wow i only get around eight or nine emails a day….. and most are just spam or news letters E.G. Dell Deals new job listings, new eggdeals or a tracking number to something. although i do do about thirty text messages per day, on average.