How I Manage Email
Monday, October 16, 2006
SimplyJosh.com has now moved to DownloadYouthMinistry.com - follow this link to visit the new site with new posts everyday!
OK, so in the last few years I've taken a fair bit of criticism for how I manage email. Here's how I do it, and I know it might go across the grain but it really works for me. Here goes:
I use an elaborate system of follow-up flags and inboxes.
Mail that comes to my @purposedriven.com stays in my main inbox. Mail that comes into my @simplyyouthministry.com inbox gets trasferred to a Inbox-SYM folder. Mail that comes to my @saddleback.net email gets routed to the Inbox-SVCC folder. Any Star Wars email to jg@theforce.net goes to, you guessed it, Inbox-Star Wars. So 4 inboxes.
And then I don't clean out any of the inboxes, right now the count is 1,541 items. In my followup folder, I've got 63 items I'm currently tracking on. That's a bit high, usually it hovers around 10-15, but with the travel to YS last week and The Gathering the week before I'm a bit behind. And when we have the baby, it'll get even worse.
Anyhow, here's the color breakdown for the inbox flags - I'm using then to tell priority and/or category of action needed.
Red Flag - Items that need immediate action, regardless of category. They need attention by the end of the week, or preferably the end of the day.So nothing ever gets deleted.
Blue Flag - These are items that need attention. They are on the to do list, they have pertinent information that I need, they require something from me at come point. The are on the list, but not a priority.
Yellow Flag - These are items specific to the PDYM Community. The are probably resources that need to be uploaded and put into the Resource Sharing section.
Green Flag - These are personal emails - not related to work or Star Wars, just people I know I want to reply to an email they sent at some point.
Every email I've received or sent is probably on my computer. The last 30 days are online on the Exchange server, the rest are autoarchived on my hard drive and instantly searchable offline. Right now that's 4.7GB, which makes me smile.
OK, that's the chaos that is my inbox. How do you do yours?
JG
posted by Unknown @ 11:35 AM |
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7 Comments:
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At 10/16/2006,
Ken Leslie said...
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Sounds familiar--I do the same thing. Currenty I have 1226 emails in my inbox-nothing deleted (except SPAM) I have done the different inbox folders, but not the colors. I think I'll try that! Thanks
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At 10/16/2006,
said...
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i get like five emails a day. most of which goes straight to "TRASH."
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At 10/16/2006,
Rob Cunningham said...
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I don't delete anything in my yahoo accounts or my gmail account. But if I don't reply right away, the odds are against ever getting a reply from me. I'm that way with birthday cards, too. Whatever that means.
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At 10/16/2006,
said...
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I do the same thing except I don't really flag e-mails, I just take care of 'em when I can, which is usually dependant on how much time a response is gonna take. Once I'm finished with a message, I delete and never empty the "Deleted Items" box. I still have every single e-mail message I've ever sent or recieved since 2001. I use Outlook, so I automatically backup the PST archive file every three days.
If you're also using Outlook, check out this handy free app from Microsoft:
http://www.mailspot.com/Lookout/download.html
It indexes all your messages and makes even complex mail searches take only seconds. -
At 10/16/2006,
John Snyder said...
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No wonder I haven't heard from you in 6 weeks
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At 10/16/2006,
said...
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Oh, I am all over this! First , I get my whole organizational ninja skills straight from David Allen and his book Getting Things Done. That has had a high influence in my email habits, anyways here it goes.
I try to get my inbox to zero (i.e. empty) at the end of every day. This will make more sense in a moment.
My folder structure is like so:
Inbox
Process Action
Respond
Waiting for
Someday Maybe
Hold
Reference
Inbox is obvious. The GTD rule is to do anything immediately that takes two minutes or less. So, any email that will take 2 minutes or less to respond to or act on I do immediately.
Process Action: is where I put emails that require an action that will take more than two minutes. I don’t determine the action initially; I just put it in this folder if I know it requires action of me. Then I take time to run through this folder, determine the action needed and put that action on the appropriate list.
Respond: This is just for emails that the obvious action is to respond, but I know it will take me longer that two minutes respond.
Someday Maybe: This is for emails that have good ideas or opportunities that I know I just can’t get to now. But I might want to someday, so I store it here and review it once a week.
Hold: This is where emails go that I know I am going to need to have right at hand for a time.
Reference: This is where everything goes eventually. It is basically an archive. I don’t do people folders cause the search on computers and especially with gmail already do that. And I hate trying to search through deeply nested folders trying to figure out what project folder or person folder I put that stinking email!
This ties in with the workflow/system I have for making sure things don’t slip through the cracks. It also helps me cause it organizes my emails by context, or by the way I need to deal with them. It works very well for me, and it helps to keep my inbox clear and other emails in the right place for what I need to do with them.
Word! -
At 10/17/2006,
Leigh Sarti said...
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My system is based on reward. I love a clean Inbox, thus being my reward. I take care of a task then it leaves my Inbox to the appropriate folder. The harder I work, the less emails in my Inbox, the more rewarding my life is.
