Productivity tips for managing your email inbox effectively
TweetLike everyone, I have been grappling with the problem of trying to manage the torrent of emails that hit my inbox (spam filtered out automatically, of course) every day. I came across this superb article by Merlin Mann in Macworld (Via Jeremy Zawodny). I immediately implemented Merlin’s suggestions but i found the cognitive cost of maintaining this folder structure a bit much (caveat emptor – this method may work for some, but it did not for me). But I found the overall concept very useful. So I redesigned the approach a bit to fit my needs. I created 2 folders @action and @waiting (the @ prefix added so that these 2 folders appear at the top of my folder structure in MS Outlook). Whenever I receive an email, i do one of 3 things – if I can respond to it immediately, I do so. If not, I move it to the @action folder. If its an email that indicates action to be taken by someone else, I move it to the @waiting folder. When I send an email, if I its something I need to follow up for action by someone else, I move it to the @waiting folder. Whenever, I find time, I keep going through the @action and @waiting folders and keep paring them down. I can’t say I am perfect now, but I feel I have a better handle on my emails and I am following up better. Since I use a blackberry and it allows you to file an email to a folder, this method is very useful. If you are looking for another technique, Priya Raju uses MS Outlook’s follow up flags to flag emails for follow up. That does not work for me because blackberry does not support it. References:
1. Rashmi Sinha has written a brilliant post on the cognitive cost of tagging which is analogous to what i felt when i had a more complex folder structure.
