5 Quick and Easy steps to control your inbox

By Marcia Francois

When you open Microsoft Outlook, what do you see?

How many messages do you have? Do you have to scroll down to view all of them? Are many of them unread? Does just the thought of them all overwhelm you?

Some of my clients tell me that they feel paralysed at the thought of their inbox bursting at its seams.

Your inbox is not a place to hold all your mail just like your physical mailbox outside your house doesn't keep all the letters, accounts and junk mail you've ever received.

When I check my mailbox every day, I don't bring all the mail in, read through it all and take it right back outside to put back inside the mail box. Do you?

Then why do we do that with our computer inbox?

It's because we don't have a system.

E-clutter happens when you open an email, can't decide what to do about it and so you close it again. And there it sits waiting for you...

When I see 1427 emails in a client's inbox, first I start twitching and then I ask why they torture themselves like this. The reply I always get is they want to cover themselves. Sound familiar?

I have a solution that is quick and easy for you.

Make a new folder, call it @today's date (where today's date is the actual date, e.g...), drag everything into that folder and start afresh. Now if you need an email from there, click Find on your menu bar and use the search function to track the email.

Now create these 5 new habits:

1. Set a goal
Decide to have an inbox with no more than 20 (or whatever your comfort number is) items at any one time. Play a game with yourself and make a point of deleting a certain number of items daily. These can be from your inbox, sent items, folders, etc.

2. Set times during the day to read and process emails
For the most part, emails are a distraction so check emails only after you do your most important task of the day. Decide on one or two other times to process emails, maybe around lunch time and then just before you leave the office.

3. Delete junk mail immediately
Junk mail is anything you have not signed up for and includes chain letters, petitions, solicitations, scams, etc.

4. Make folders
Most people don't use folders correctly. You don't make individual folders just to drag all the contents of your inbox into these folders. First of all, limit the number of folders and second, have meaningful folders like @Follow up, @To read, @To phone, etc. The @ sign in the front means that you have to action those folders. In my schedule, I have time blocked out to do some phoning, following up, reading, etc.

5. Set up rules
Go to Tools, and under Organise, you can set up rules to send emails automatically from certain senders to specific folders. I use this function for all personal emails.

This week's challenge

1. Realise is that your inbox is not a place to store your e-junk.
2. Develop a system to manage your inbox and work on it for at least 15 minutes a day.
3. There are some really practical, time-saving tips in Conquer your email so that you can take your overflowing inbox to a beautiful, uncluttered state again.