Productivity Tip: Email Organization in a Simple System

If you are like many office professionals, you probably have a love-hate relationship with email. You can’t do your job without it, but some day it seems to add way too much stress to your life. One of the most stressful parts: just trying to keep the inbox from getting totally out of control, and making sure you don’t miss anything important.

Trying to come up with sophisticated systems for managing your email can just make things more complicated. That’s why the best solution may be to just keep things simple. This article suggests dividing everything in your mailbox into three categories. The first is stuff you can trash right away: junk mail and spam. Most likely, that will eliminate quite a few messages from your list.

Next, there are messages that are useful or important but don’t require any action on your part. These, you should file into appropriate folders for future reference, where you can locate them easily if needed.

Lastly, there are the messages that require you to do something. This is often what trips people up. The key here is to take some kind of action right away, even if you can’t fully resolve whatever the issue is. At the very least, send off a quick reply letting the recipient know you are working on it.
Letting the messages sit in your inbox without quick action increases the risk that they will fall off your radar screen, meaning important stuff could fall through the cracks.

Do you have a simple system for email? Share tips in the comments.

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