Conquer Your Inbox and E-mail Etiquette

After settling back into a routine in this new year, it's now a good time to think about how to more effectively manage that overflowing e-mail Inbox of yours. For most of us, the volume of e-mails received each day (both personal and business-related) can be overwhelming. Below are some tips to help you control your Inbox rather than letting it control you.

Inbox Management Tips

• Read: Select a couple chunks of time throughout your day to dedicate to reading your e-mails. After reading each e-mail, take action on it. The content and context of the message will determine what to do with it: reply, reorganize, and/or remove.
• Reply: Not all e-mails need a response, but to those that do, try to respond to as quickly as possible. This will not only make you more responsive to others, but also complete a task that will most likely have to be done at some point in the future.
• Reorganize: Decide whether or not a message needs to be kept and then use one or more the of following Outlook features to keep your e-mail organized.
• Follow Up Flags: Flag a message requiring further action. Click here for more about follow up flags.
• Categorize: Use categories to group related messages. Your Inbox can be sorted and grouped by categories. See my previous post about categories.
• Conversation Grouping: This inbox arrangement will help to reduce the number of e-mails displayed in your Inbox. Click here for more about conversation arrangement.
• Folders: Create and use folder to store e-mails that need to be saved.
• Rules: Use rules to automatically move e-mails from specific people or with specific words in the subject line or body to another folder.
• Calendar, Tasks, and Notes: Create calendar items, tasks, or notes based upon e-mails that might require one or more of these items.
• Remove: Delete e-mail messages that are no longer needed. A friend of mine confessed that he had more than 14,000 e-mails in his Inbox (yes, you read that right...14,000...yikes!!). Messages to which you have previously replied are stored in your Sent Items folder. You can always search this folder if, by chance, you need a particular message in the future, which you probably won't.
• Conversation Clean Up: Using the conversation clean up tools will delete redundant e-mail messages in the threaded conversation. Click here for more information on conversation clean up tools.
• Unsubscribe: Most of us receive numerous advertisement e-mails daily. Usually, there is a link at the bottom of these messages to remove yourself from the mailing list.
• Empty Deleted Items: Set up your Outlook so it automatically deletes all items in your Deleted Items folder each time you exit Outlook. This option is in the Advanced area on the Outlook Options dialog box [File tab, Options, Advanced, Outlook start and exit area]

E-mail Etiquette

Since you're now going to make a concerted effort to keep your Inbox under control, it's also good to review some e-mail etiquette guidelines.

• Read and promptly reply to e-mail messages
• Use a short and appropriate subject line
• Keep messages brief and to the point
• Include an appropriate greeting and closing
• Use signatures when needed; overuse of signatures may seem pretentious.
• Use proper grammar and spelling
• Use Reply All ONLY when necessary that all recipients receive your response.
• Use read receipts only when necessary (this should not be a default setting on all e-mail messages you send)
• Use a tone that is conversational (not sloppy or grammatically incorrect) and courteous
• Proofread before sending

Now go and conquer that Inbox of yours!!