I get way too many e-mails -- 300-400 per day -- to try and continually sort them. It would drive me absolutely batty. I also never delete an e-mail for records purposes.
Instead, I'm huge on flagging e-mails for follow up. Everything that comes into my Inbox gets a quick scan; if it requires action, I immediately flag it and move on to the next unread e-mail. I do this until I have a short reprieve from new unreads, and then go back and act on each flagged e-mail until it's time to start the process all over again.
By the end of the day, I (ideally) have no unreads and no flagged e-mails. Since I keep all e-mails for the "paper trail," I archive them on a monthly basis in a separate .PST file.
Thank you, you saved me the hassle of typing this out, even the numbers 300-400 match, I reply and such mainly from my main device and then BCC that reply to my main inbox so I have a copy of everthing thereby I can delete it when I need/want to from my mobile device.
I use soonr.com and google desktop that way I can access ANY email at ANY time and if needed fwd it to myself on my mobile device
My "flaging" consists of NOT REPLIED to on the mobile device or saved in some special folder on that device (which btw automatically backs up online, thats a feature of the device), I also end up having to split up the PST files per month and/or quaterly.
I *love* having a clean inbox, but unfortunately it just never seems to happen for me - in fact, I'm probably the team member Jon is talking about in his post replying back a year later. ops:
I can't nail down the problem exactly - I use my email as a task list to some degree (though using Outlook 2007 I've been creating tasks and giving them categories) - but I think the real problem is that there's just too much stuff flying in. If an email is simple - delete, reply, etc. - then I'll do it right away. The problem is all the OTHER emails where I have a task to go along with it...when I get 100 of those, man, it's hard to get them out of my way. :?
I think maybe I need to hire some of you people as consultants - clearly you know what you're doing. ;-)
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If an email is simple - delete, reply, etc. - then I'll do it right away. The problem is all the OTHER emails where I have a task to go along with it...when I get 100 of those, man, it's hard to get them out of my way. :?
That's exactly my problem. I use a mixture of all the techniques you guys haven written about here and I found it really interesting!
I also learned some new things and discovered the tool "NEO" and SoonR which were new to me.
The first is Lookout which you can still find out there. M$ bought them out and have incorporated the application into Outlook 2007 (I believe). Basically is a search engine, but with its filtering and cross PST indexing means I can find anything within a second e.g. from:theo to:john filetype:doc email archive
will find all the emails from theo to john which contain a word docs attachment with the keywords email and archive in it. There are a number of other parameters as well.
The second is an addin which learns which folder to file emails in. I wrote an email to a friend which explains how I use it. The emails below.
I've spent the morning and some of last week getting to grips with it; hence my learnings:
1. Create a load of folders (they call them catagories) and put emails relavent to that folder into it; put them all under one master folder. App likes more than 20 in a folder; I've not done that but retrained over time.
2. move all remaining emails out of your inbox
3. Install the app.
4. Set up the folders and train the app
5. move the emails (from 2) back into inbox a few at a time. It will move them into the folders via its rules. You cna tweak the training this way.
I've also set up 2 Search Folders:
1. One which covers all the folders in use - you can set this up in the master folder you created in 1 and tell it to include all sub-folders :-D
2. Once of the main good things about an inbox, is its fills up. With this tool you loose that hence don't know when its getting out of hand; see what's come in today etc. Hence I've created a search folder like 1; but only showing emails from today.
With both these search folders I've changed the view to include the "In Folder" from the "All Mail Items" in the view. That way I can immediately see if its in the wrong place. You still need to move to that folder to retrain; but over time it gets better.
Hope that helps - what other addins are you all using?
The first is Lookout which you can still find out there. M$ bought them out and have incorporated the application into Outlook 2007 (I believe). Basically is a search engine, but with its filtering and cross PST indexing means I can find anything within a second e.g. from:theo to:john filetype:doc email archive
will find all the emails from theo to john which contain a word docs attachment with the keywords email and archive in it. There are a number of other parameters as well.
Google Desktop does that so nicely and not only through emails but any other document or file on your computer, and when you team that up with soonr.com it's really nice, you can actually get away with not having all your emails with you "physically".
MY DEAR WIFE, otoh, is the exact opposite. She keeps EVERYTHING in her inbox...
That reminds me of my dad. He saves any document he creates in his My Documents folder. No subfolders. Just two bazillion files in one My Documents folder.
And he complains when he can't find a file.
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I never keep a clean inbox. But I do use a combination of inbox rules and archive.
At work, I have inbox rules based on who the email was sent to. In other words if an email is sent to a particular distribution list, it gets moved to the applicable folder.
My mailbox (including subfolders) archives every two days. And I roll my archive once a month.
My home email uses inbox rules based on who the sender is.
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I used to keep my inbox organized by moving stuff to specific folders, or deleting, forwarding, etc.
However, I have gotten lazy about keeping organized and now I have too many emails-and I wish I would kept organized because now I have more work in email.
I recently have trouble someone breaking into my email (again...it used to be hotmail but now it was my yahoo) so now I am thinking about opening a new email, forwarding everything and organizing from scratch.
I want to get to the point where I have no more than ten old emails in my inbox, or only new emails.
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I have a 2008 folder, and in that folder I create a new folder for every month, and after i'm done reading email in my inbox, I move it to that month. I keep an extra folder for my banking and another for any emails that deal with purchases, such as confirmations and tracking numbers. I need to in the habit of exporting to .pst more often, so I don't lose any mail when Jon is fiddling with out Exchange server. The only items I keep in my inbox are ones that I want to keep there for followup or information.
ops: 
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