Spring Cleaning: How To Unclutter Your Inbox

Welcome to all the new readers who have joined us during the past week from around the world!

Today’s tip is critical for power e-mail users - especially so if you use e-mail for business. But before I get into it I want to extend a special offer to you.

I don’t normally do this, but as of Thursday of last week I have a bit more free time on my hands than I normally do. You see, I lost my job on Thursday, a victim of a direct marketing agency’s 35% cut in staff across all departments in order to reduce overhead. You might be asking yourself, “So how does this benefit me?” Well, I’ll tell you.

I have over ten years experience in all areas of the Internet advertising and marketing sector. I’ve been helping businesses large and small promote themselves responsibly online since the very first ad campaign ran on the Web. It was for AT&T and Zima back in 1995. I’ve done everything from business development to marketing to advertising sales. I’ve been a keynote speaker representing the United States at Internet World India in 2000 and a featured speaker at many other conferences nationally and internationally, and I know a great deal about how to market a business online.

For the next two weeks only, I am willing to donate my time to THE FIRST 50 PEOPLE who are interested and who need help in the areas of advertising sales, business development or online marketing. I’ll give you a free 30-minute phone consult, and hell - I’ll even pay for the call. Tell me what your biggest challenges are and maybe together we can come up with some creative ideas that will help you. If you live outside of the United States, I may have to do it by e-mail simply because of the time difference. I’m in Portland, Oregon.

To take advantage of this special offer, send me an e-mail to adam@digitalocean.cc and tell me a bit about your company and your online objectives, along with what budget you have allocated to reaching these objectives and the best time to reach you by phone. I’ll call you. If I can’t help you, I have an extensive network of contacts and can probably refer you to someone who can. If you’re not the appropriate person to speak with, forward this to your company’s President or CEO. Be forewarned, however: I am a military veteran, so am very blunt, direct and will give you my expert opinion even if it contradicts what you may be hearing from your internal marketing staff.

As for my background, you can view my resume online here to get a sense as to my broad range of experience. Now, on with today’s tip!

How many e-mail messages are in your inbox right now?

Even the most skilled, power e-mail users can get backlogged on e-mail. If you’d like to know why you’re backlogged and what you can do about it, you should read my series called “Escaping the Riptide“. I’m in the middle of the series, but the first few articles should be useful to you.

In any case, There are currently 1,539 e-mail messages in my inbox. (I get hundreds per day) Most e-mail users I speak with are overwhelmed. After all, it’s gotten to the point where there are just far too many to read, let alone read and reply to with some thought. Yet, it is this very technique of using our inbox as a storage area that actually contributes to your sense of being overwhelmed. What it also does is make it much more difficult for you to manage your own flow of e-mail.

One of my daughters is a teenager. I asked her the other day why her room seemed to have three distinct layers to the floor area. “How can you possibly find anything?” I asked. Like most teens, she replied that she knows exactly where everything is. “Okay, go find the sweater I gave you for Christmas.” 35 minutes later she prances in with it. “See? I told you.”

Your e-mail inbox is much like my daughter’s room. Well, I hope not, but for the purpose of this article, let’s just assume it is. Like many e-mail users, you’ve got your e-mail program set to check e-mail every two minutes because you’re so wired and don’t want to miss out on anything. So you’ve got a constant flow IN. If the flow IN is greater than your available time and processing skill, your room gets messy. Follow me thus far? Good.

Why it pays to have an empty inbox

• From a psychological standpoint, having an empty inbox is a great feeling. It’s a sense of accomplishment.
• From a personal and professional standpoint, if your inbox is empty you’ll be much more likely to act quickly on messages that need it, rather than procrastinating while messages get pushed farther and farther down in your inbox. Eventually you feel embarrassed to even reply because it’s been so long. Does this sound like someone you know? Maybe perhaps you?
• If you get in the habit of touching each message only once, you can either reduce the amount of time it takes you to process your e-mail - or - you can process more e-mail in the amount of time you are currently spending. What would you do with an extra 30 minutes or 1 hour per day in your week?

How to unclutter your overflowing inbox

First, turn off the auto-checking feature on your e-mail program. It’s not doing you any good unless you’re a system administrator and/or your job requires you to provide e-mail support to customers throughout the day. What autocheck is doing is interrupting your train of thought every two minutes, piquing your curiosity to stop what you are doing to see if something more urgent has come in, and you end up getting very little done. If you must use auto-checking, I suggest setting it to check for new mail once per hour. That way you can be reminded that it is time to get up and take an eye-strain and carpal tunnel break from the keyboard.

Next, create a folder or mailbox and call it “TEMP”. If you’re using a Web e-mail client as I noticed many of you are, there should be an easy way to do this. With Gmail you probably want to create a LABEL called “TEMP”.

Now highlight all the messages in your inbox and MOVE them to your TEMP folder. With Gmail you’ll probably have to label all messages in your inbox with the TEMP label (or star them) and then archive them all to move them out of your inbox. The point is that your inbox is now empty. Take a few moments to enjoy this feeling… Okay.

When e-mail comes in, with the exception of the rarest instances, there are only going to be four things that you will do with each message:

1. READ IT. If it takes you less than 30 seconds and does not require storage or action, you’re going to READ AND DELETE.
2. TAKE ACTION. In 15 seconds you should be able to scan who sent it, the Subject and the first sentence of each paragraph or read the first paragraph and know if it will require action (longer reading or reply with comments, delegation or the creation of a task or appointment)
3. FILE IT. If you know you’ll need to save it for reference and/or retrieval later on.
4. DELETE IT. If it is spam, you’re going to delete it without reading it.

Read it, take action, file it or delete it.

So let’s try it out. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time of course! But you have to know where to start! The first thing you’ll want to do is arrange the messages in your TEMP folder so that the newest ones are at the top. In most e-mail programs you can do this by clicking the “Received” column above the date. Most Web e-mail accounts already do this by default.

Use the arrow down key to quickly scan through your entire TEMP folder, using the following rules:

• If you can read it and delete it in 15 seconds, do it.
• If it requires a reply or action on your part, make it a Task. Tasks generally have a deadline and a priority indicating how urgent or important they are to you. If you don’t have a tasking client in your e-mail program, you can simply create three folders (I like to call them “buckets”) into which you will move messages: P1 - Urgent and Important, P2 - Not urgent but Important, P3 - Urgent but not Important, P4 - Everything else (not urgent, not important).
• If it’s a newsletter or professional reading (with the exception of this newsletter of course!), you’re NOT going to stop and read it when it comes in. You’re going to throw it into a README bucket (folder) and block out an hour of your time on your day planner to read all of the stuff in your README folder. You can do this with print magazines too. It works wonderfully. Just flip quickly through the magazine, tear out the pages you want to read and throw them in a README manilla folder and toss the magazine in the trash. Then bring your README manilla folder with you on the train, plane or bus. It’s a lot easier than lugging around ten magazines and your office looks a lot less cluttered.
• If you scan it and it looks like something you may need to refer to later on or find, FILE IT. See the article I wrote on “How to use Gmail as your second brain” for a great storage and retrieval method.
• If it requires an appointment, schedule it
• If it is spam, delete it.

Go through your entire TEMP folder, spending no more than 15 seconds or so on each message. If you have thousands or have to stop, be sure you schedule time and a reminder to come back to it. If you don’t, you’re likely to forget about your TEMP folder and everyone in it will think you dropped off the face of the planet.

After doing this you should have an empty TEMP folder/bucket. Go ahead and delete the bucket if you want to, as long as it is empty.

Your messages should now all be organized by YOUR priority, not someone else’s. You have appointments set with reminders as needed. You have plenty to read. Another trick if you’re short on items to read (Haha) is to go to your README bucket and print out hard copies of newsletters and other professional reading and throw them into your manilla README folder. After you’ve printed something, delete it from the bucket. (Yes, I live in Oregon and realize this kills trees…)

Now take a break! You’re more than halfway there!

After returning from your break, block off an hour of time to process messages in your P1 bucket. If you can’t get through all of them in an hour, don’t worry. But don’t move on to the P2 bucket until your P1 bucket is empty. One great trick I use to save time is to just pick up the phone. If someone sends me an e-mail that is more than four paragraphs long and requires a reseponse, generally I’d rather spend 2 minutes by phone than composing a lengthy reply by e-mail and creating more work for them to do. Using the phone saves us both time, and with services like OneSuite.com available offering rates as low as 2 1/2 cents per minute for long distance, the phone can be used efficiently and effectively. On that note, don’t forget to include your phone number in your e-mail signature so I can call you!

Meanwhile, back at the Batcave… Your inbox is still empty, right? It should be, because you’ve turned off auto-checking and not checked it. You may find yourself wanting to check for new messages… RESIST THE URGE!

Block off one-hour chunks of time until you work your way through your buckets. Don’t feel bad if it takes you some time. Remember: You didn’t get into this mess overnight, so it’s not going to be cleaned up overnight either!

Adam Boettiger
adam@digitalocean.cc

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About the author

Adam Boettiger has been involved with the Internet, Web, and e-mail since 1995 and, after falling victim to a 35% staff reduction at a direct marketing agency, is currently reviewing employment opportunities and is taking time to reflect on what his next adventure may be. If your company or someone you know is seeking to fill a position in business development, marketing or
sales, please contact Mr. Boettiger to request a copy of his resume.

e-mail: adam@digitalocean.cc Phone: (206) 888-6824

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