taming my e-mail inbox

A few weeks ago, after over two weeks of an EXTREMELY busy personal and professional life, I found myself with a completely out-of-control personal e-mail inbox.  As of 10:30 AM on that Saturday morning, I had over 250 unopened e-mails and over 450 in my inbox.  But this really just highlighted an on-going problem that I have:  how to successfully manage my personal e-mail inbox so that it doesn’t get out of control as it is now.

in-box before

I am a person who CANNOT STAND to have much e-mail in my inbox.  I prefer to only have items there with which I need to deal, meaning things that are “to do” items for me – basically e-mails I need to answer, links I need to save as favorites or things I need to download/save on my hard drive.  I have a pretty detailed set of folders in which to store e-mails after I deal with them if they need to be kept (and I have to admit now that I keep many more than I should, but we will deal with that another day).  But unless I am obsessive about reviewing, reading, dealing with my e-mail every single day, multiple times a day, it gets out of control.  I need to take charge so that this doesn’t continue to happen.  Here’s my plan of attack.

First of all, just as with paper in an actual inbox, it is best to only touch things once.  This may be impractical for a few more time-consuming things that I don’t want to stop the purge to handle, so it is ok to leave those in the inbox to deal with later on.  But, as much as possible, I am going to try to only “touch” e-mails once.

Second, as I begin going through the list, I need to pick a way to sort the e-mails.  There are several options for this.  I can choose most recent to oldest or oldest to most recent.  Or I can sort alphabetically or some other way that makes sense to me.  The key is to stick with it throughout the entire inbox clean-up.  I am choosing to go most recent to oldest.

Next, I need to make a commitment not to save any e-mails to read later.  I have a bad habit of leaving those e-mails in my inbox and they really contribute to the clutter.  If it is not important enough to read it now or as soon as it comes in, then it is not important enough to save in my inbox.

Then, as I go through the messages, I will seriously evaluate all the newsletters I receive.  As I glance through the morass this morning and try to quantify it, I see that I currently subscribe to at least five daily newsletters, at least three weekly newsletters, at least two daily deal e-mails and several weekly deal e-mails.  Wow.  That is WAY too much stuff that I am inviting into my inbox that I obviously don’t have time to read.  I need to make some hard choices about these things.  Which ones do I actually enjoy reading?  Which ones do I usually glance at and delete?  Which ones would I not miss if I unsubscribed?  Once I answer these questions, I will take the time to act accordingly, by opting out for those that I need to discontinue.  And committing to read the ones I decide to keep receiving.

After making those hard choices on newsletters, it is time to evaluate the promotional e-mails I receive.  There are several companies with whom I enjoy doing business and signed up to receive their promotional e-mails.  A quick glance of the first five screens of today’s full inbox shows 15 of these (and there are definitely more than that).  And then there are the causes which I have supported in the past who also send regular e-mails (and I often don’t remember opting into to receive their e-mails, but somehow they are in my inbox on a somewhat regular basis).  While getting a discount or notice of a sale is a great thing, I don’t think it is worth this volume of e-mail.  I am going to opt-out of all that I can and then go “like” the pages on Facebook.  Most of these also let their Facebook fans know of the sales and then I just have a little extra info in my newsfeed (which can be controlled) rather than a lot of extra e-mail to deal with in my inbox.

Next, there are the miscellaneous things that I have signed up for over time:  neighborhood watch e-mails; newsletters and invitations from my college, sorority, high school, and elementary school; notifications from banks, credit cards, and credit bureaus; online bills (to avoid the paper bills); e-mails to remind me of the birthdays of family and friends; and those (now depressing) emails that tell me how much my home is currently worth.  Quantifying these really make me realize how much I need to cut back on these.  I don’t really need all of these.  I need to make the same hard decisions on these as I did on the newsletters.  And then I need to act.

Last, but not least, I will be left with the real, personal e-mail – notes from friends and family, questions and information from the women’s organization in which I am active, information from my small-group leader at church.  Besides restoring my sanity, these items are the real reason for this whole clean-up.  I want to be more on top of these things.  I want to spend my personal e-mail time everyday looking at, reading and dealing with these things – putting dates in my calendar, answering inquiries from committee chairs, replying to friends.  These are the things that really matter, the people who really matter.

Once I had a plan, I was off to tackle the inbox beast.  Will let you know soon how it went!