Are you flooded with the emails? Do you feel like you’re wasting large amount of time sorting business e-mail messages? If your answer is yes, then you need to take an action immediately:
Don’t worry, you’re not alone. E-mail is now a universal phenomenon, and it had made a big impact on the way we do business these days. It has also increased the time you spend on communicating.
I don’t want to make it a Lengthy post, lemme make it short, simple and to the point post. So, here is how you can manage your emails appropriately which in-turn leads you to manage your time more efficiently:
After reading this post you’ll learn:
1. How to spend your time on managing e-mails?
2. Which emails to keep and which emails to delete?
3. How to organize your emails?
4. How to quickly find your email when you need them?
1. How to spend your time on e-mails?
Managing your emails makes things easier and saves you a lot of time. It facilitates better time management and helps you work effectively and efficiently which in-turn leads to yours and your Company’s growth and success.
Some of the best practices an individual can follow in order to better manage their emails are as follows:
a. Keep your inbox as empty as possible – If you have fewer emails in your inbox you can easily look, manage and respond to those emails.
b. Delete unnecessary emails – If you would have received the emails in your inbox which are not important for you, go ahead and delete those emails. For example: you received an email in your inbox from your Company’s security team stating there is a car with so and so registration number parked in a non-parking area.
c. Unsubscribe from sources which spams your inbox – Deleting the emails would be a short term solution. However, the permanent solution would be to eliminate the sources from where the unwanted emails comes from.
d. Identify the importance of the email – As soon as the email arrives go through the subject line and determine whether the email requires immediate attention or it can be handled later.
e. Sorting or Categorizing emails – Create different folders in your Inbox either based on the departments like Marketing, Finance, HR, Administration etc.. or by names like John (Manager), Brett (Team Leader), Johnson (Director), Bettina (HR) etc… and move the emails to the respective folders as and when you receives the emails from that department or from them.
2. Which emails to keep and which emails to delete?
It’s not necessary that only the work related email messages that occlude business people’s mailboxes. Often, a lot of work time is wasted in handling the personal and business emails. Having too many personal emails can make it difficult for you to identify the critical business emails:
Some of the best practices to better manage your personal and business emails are as follows:
a. Keep a separate inbox for personal and business emails – If your Company gives you the permission to configure your personal email account in the business email application then go ahead and setup personal email account and manage it when you aren’t working on your business emails.
b. Do not share your business email address with your personal contacts unless they have something which is related to the work that you do.
c. Identify the emails which to keep and which to delete with the help of Subject line:
Subject: Automatic Reply – You may read the message and delete it as you may not require it in future
Subject: News Update/News Letters – Read and Delete or you may keep it for future reference
Subject: Meeting request – Accept and keep it for future reference (If reoccurring and important)
Subject: Burgers available at Reception – This email is not of real
Subject: Car parked in No Parking area – If it is not for you, delete it.
Subject: Thanks for your great team work – Deleting such kind of emails free up some space in your laptop/desktop. Delete the emails which you do need and doesn’t require any action.
3. How to organize your Email account or Mailbox:
It is always advisable to organize your emails in the best way possible. Organizing emails properly can help you in easily searching the emails from an individual or department.
Below are the best practices to organize your emails more effectively:
a. Create Folders – Create different folders in your Inbox either based on the departments like Marketing, Finance, HR, Administration etc.. or by names like John (Manager), Brett (Team Leader), Johnson (Director), Bettina (HR) etc… and move the emails to the respective folders as and when you receives the emails from that department or from them.
b. Setup Rules or Filters – Setting up rules or filters can minimize your work. Once the rules are setup properly they’ll run automatically as and when the email arrives.
c. Mark the emails – You may go ahead mark the emails as follow-up, complete, read, unread and you may also categorize the emails with different colors etc.. Use the inbuilt email client features to organize your emails better.
4. How to quickly find your email when you need them?
Once you’ve done with deleting or preventing the irrelevant emails from arriving in your inbox and also organized the emails using folders and rules, now it’ll become easy for you to search the emails.
Below are couple of ways you may go ahead and search the emails:.
a. Using inbuilt search – You may go ahead and use inbuilt search option present in your email client. Just type in a search string or a key word it’ll give you all the emails which contains that keyword.
b. Built-in sorting feature – You search emails by date, subject, attachments, To, From, Size etc.. Select the appropriate category or search feature and search for the email. You may also sort the emails by Today’s, Yesterday’s, Last Weeks, Two Weeks ago, Month ago etc..
c. Search in Folders – If you create the folders with an individual name or departments. It’ll be easy for you to locate the email from that individual or department.
Please feel free to comment below in case you have any questions? Also, please feel free to share the post with your friends, colleagues, team leaders, relatives etc…
