This about.com article tells non-profits not to spam.
Email can be stressful. Left unmanaged, it’s the never ending junk mail pile. Imagine every email in your inbox as a piece of paper. If you have a few hundred or thousand in there, it looks like a nightmare. Imagine if that was your desk. People walk by, see your inbox stacked with a thousand sheets, you would get nods of sympathy. Worse, if you’ve got other people who are depending on answers from you, they know not to rely on you if you’ve got an inbox that looks like that.
Years before I started doing this, I decided what that I wanted a more productive, lower stress day. For me, it started with “Becoming an Email Ninja“ by Merlin Mann. That, coupled with healthy regular doses of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” got me to the dull, quiet email management system I have now – a welcome change to the situation that preceded it.
For anyone interested, here’s a cut-to-the-chase down and dirty explanation of how I’m doing this.
The Down and Dirty Approach
My inbox is sorted in reverse chronological order, so that the earliest items are at the top. I use a basic action/reaction task management and filing system. There’s only three tasks …
- Decide
- Do
- Do it again ‘til Done
Decide
I check my inbox as things come in, then decide what to do with it (in no particular order).
- Read It.
- Trash it.
- Respond to it.
- Do something complicated.
- File it.
I then decide if the action is going to take me less than 1 minute to do (again, thank you David Allen!).
Do
Sometimes, all you need to do is read an email. If it’s going to take you less than a minute to read, then do it! Then you can either Trash it or File it.
If it’s spam, sales offers, anything that is just junk that got past the spam filter, I treat it just like junk mail from home and send it to the trash! Technically I recycle it, but the idea is the same. Junk mail is trash, so Trash it!
I respond to everything that needs a response. Maybe someone just needs an acknowledgement. Maybe they need an approval. Either way, if it’s going to take me less than a minute to do either, great, out the door, done! Then I can Trash it or File it.
I need to do something complicated, that means it will take me more than a minute to do. I acknowledge the email to let the person know I’m on it, then place it in the @Action folder as an unread item. This, along with some task ticklers, reminds me that I’ve got to do something here. If it’s deadline driven, I’ll drop an item in my calendar, too.
So, wow, look at that. The email is nice and sorted into something useful, so it’s time to …
Do it again ‘til Done
I go through this loop for each email until the inbox is down to zero. Surprisingly, it often takes very little time, sometimes less than 5 minutes a day, to do this.
The key is the @Actions folder. This is a way for me to externalize my memory for bigger, less immediate tasks than the one I’m working on. A lot of the day, I only need to check that @Actions folder. So, my email ends up being this little, easy-to-deal-with trickle for the most part, except for some key items that I can fit into the rest of the day.
I check the @Actions folder as I complete things, often once every 1-2 hours.
Processing an Unruly Inbox
After a long absence or vacation, I find my clean, zero inbox has a few hundred things in it. When that happens, I immediately sort the inbox by Sender then go about attacking it. A lot of times, there are some senders that all require the same action (Trash it!) so I just do it. There are others that just forward you material to read, etc.. Same rules apply.
These systems are one of the reasons why it’s never been a challenge to keep on top of my email. Read up on David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” and Merlin Mann’s “InBox Zero”, then give it a shot yourself!