Organizing your email list : secret to a productive life

Some of you have missed vital opportunities because you fail to check your emails regularly or even when you do, you leave out the most important information because you have a large chunk of inboxes and it’s stressful to check thoroughly. This indeed can be overwhelming but the good news is, there is a hack.

Regardless of the field or position, effective management and organization of your email inbox stand as crucial workplace competencies. The ability to structure your emails enhances communication with peers, clients, and other professional contacts in a timely fashion.

In this article, you will learn useful strategies to aid in the management of your personal email inbox.

3 basic Tips to manage your inbox

It is essential to know these basic tips in your quest for a solution to your clustered inbox challenge.

Have separate email accounts for different facets of your life

One important hack is to establish different email accounts for separate activities in your life. It is best to keep work and personal email accounts separate. For example, you could have your personal inbox and your freelance inbox. If you have an employer-sponsored email, you might also separate any freelance or consulting work messages from personal and other work-related messages by having dedicated inboxes for each.

Delete old mails

Getting rid of old promotional emails helps to declutter your inbox and focus on important messages. For instance, you got an invite in your mail for an event that happened five years ago, do you think such mails should still be taking up space in your inbox? Certainly No. Clear your inbox and leave out only recent mails and probably some indispensable newsletters that you may need to reference in the future. Additionally, by regularly purging old emails, you minimize the potential damage that could arise from unauthorized access to your email account.

Unsubscribe

It is okay to unsubscribe from newsletters that no longer serve you. Unsubscribing from unnecessary emails reduces the volume of incoming messages, allowing you to focus on what truly matters. The more you keep deceiving yourself that you will read them, days and weeks go by and you just realize the mails are not only taking space but preventing you from focusing on important messages. By doing this, your productivity is enhanced, you are able to save time and minimize distractions. Unsubscribing from certain emails is essential for maintaining a streamlined inbox and ensuring efficient email management. Use tools like Unroll.me to easily unsubscribe from multiple subscriptions at once.

Now that you have learnt the three basic tips , let us dive deeper into how you can successfully organize your inbox.

1. Use labels and folders
2. Star important messages
3. Use canned response
4. Use the archive feature

Use labels and folders

One easy way to get your inbox organized is to create labels and folders. And how do you do this?

• Folders: In most services, moving a message to a folder removes it from the main inbox.
• Labels: Labels in services like Gmail allow you to tag messages without moving them from the inbox.

You categorize your mails based on the contents or purpose. This helps you to navigate through your inbox easily and helps to quickly access messages when needed. Moreover, folders and labels serve as effective tools for prioritization, as you can assign different levels of importance to various categories. By designating folders for urgent matters and labels for less time-sensitive topics, you can ensure that critical emails are promptly addressed while managing non-urgent communications more effectively.

Star important messages

Marking emails with a flag or star doesn’t remove them from your inbox, but can quickly give you a visual representation of what emails to focus on next. Starring or flagging allows you to easily locate and revisit these messages when needed, saving time and reducing the risk of overlooking important details. Also, starring messages can serve as a communication tool within teams, indicating to colleagues which emails require their attention or involvement. This fosters collaboration and ensures that everyone is aligned on important tasks and objectives

Use canned response

Canned responses are beneficial if you use email for work-related purposes. And you can use them to save time when asking about the status of your online purchases. This method, while not as streamlined as Gmail’s canned responses, still offers a time-saving alternative to typing out repetitive messages.

Use archive feature

Sometimes you may have emails that are unimportant or not as urgent as others, but also not ready to be deleted. For these, you can use an archive feature that removes them from your inbox and store it for later. For example, you can archive an email for a future task. Once you’re ready to complete it, you can pull the email up, complete the task, and delete it when finished.

5 tools to organize your Gmail inbox

Below are a few tools to help you organize your Gmail.

• Circle: Helps integrate all your communication channels into a single platform. Create and manage email campaigns.
• Maildrop: Helps you stay clear of spam.
• Unroll.Me: Helps you manage all your newsletters from one dashboard. Makes unsubscribing surprisingly easy.
• Hiver: Delegate emails and chats as tasks automatically. Write Notes (and not emails) for internal conversations. Use email templates.
• AwayFind:This lets you decide which emails are worth a notification. You can choose between being informed via SMS, phone call, desktop alert, or the AwayFind app.

Conclusion

We are inundated with emails daily and it’s easy to let it spin out of control. That is why it’s important to declutter your inbox regularly so that it doesn’t become so overwhelming. By incorporating these methods into your routine, you can transform the way you handle email communication and be more efficient.