You wouldn’t leave every piece of paper that lands on your desk piling up there forever. At some point you would throw it out or file it somewhere.
But that’s exactly what most people do with their email – and that’s a good way to get overwhelmed and miss things.
One quick note: This is written for individual users who don’t already have an organization’s email policy or a legal requirement telling them how to handle emails. If your workplace has specific rules about retention or filing, those come first. This is just for your own inbox, on your own time, under your own rules.
What actually belongs in your inbox
Here’s the basic idea: your inbox should only have emails you still need to act on.
…and possibly also ones where you’re waiting for someone else’s reply.
That’s it.
Anything you’ve already dealt with still in your inbox is just clutter that makes you work extra hard. And it costs you more than you’d think. Every time you scroll past twenty already-handled emails to find the one you actually need, that’s your brain doing work it doesn’t need to do.
And that’s exactly how older items that still need attention get missed. They are buried somewhere and easy to miss between twenty “useless” e-mails – especially when you don’t remember that you need to search for them because you have twenty million other things on your mind and you’re busy.
Be kind to yourself and avoid all that extra work.
Emails you’re waiting on
Ideally, these get their own folder (or label in Gmail). Something like “Waiting” or “Follow Up.” Move an email there once you’ve replied, and check that folder every so often instead of having those items sit in your inbox.
Now – if it’s an item you need to get a reply for today, by all means, leave it in your inbox as a reminder.
That’s also a great folder for emails you have initiated which you need to follow up on if you don’t get a reply. Just BCC (not CC) yourself in those outgoing emails and move your copy to that folder. Easy reminder!
That said, if your inbox volume is very low, don’t feel like you need this. Leaving them right in the inbox can work fine too, sometimes that’s exactly what keeps you from forgetting about them in the first place.
Done with it? Delete it or file it
Once something is handled, you’ve got two options: delete it or archive it.
Deleting is simple, but there’s a thing worth knowing: Deleted e-mails generally go into the trash. And there they keep sitting, taking up your email’s quota – or they get automatically deleted.
How long those deleted emails actually stay around depends on your email provider. Some purge the trash automatically after a set number of days, others leave it there until you empty it yourself. Most of my accounts are set to purge anything older than 30 days – so I actually use the trash as a kind of short term holding spot as well. Things I’m fairly sure I won’t need any more but want accessible for a few weeks just in case. Worth checking what your own setup does. Also worth knowing: trash usually isn’t included in a normal search, so if something is sitting in there you’ll need to go into that folder specifically to find it.
If it doesn’t get automatically deleted, it’s a great spot to find and permanently delete the oldest emails from when your account runs close to your storage quota.
Archiving (or filing) is for anything you might want to have later but don’t need in your everyday view. The part people don’t always realize is that archived email is still fully searchable. You’re not giving up “findable” for “manageable”. You get both.
The Archive button works differently for different email systems
- Gmail: hitting Archive just removes the Inbox label. Nothing gets deleted or moved anywhere odd. It’s still fully searchable, and if you want to browse just what you’ve archived, type in:archive into the search box.
- Outlook (desktop or web): Archive actually moves the email into the Archive folder. A default “All Folders” search will pick it up automatically (a “Current Folder) selection in your inbox won’t; or you can just open the Archive folder and look or search there.
- POP/IMAP setups: you may not get a built-in Archive button at all. You then need to create your own “Archive” folder and drag emails into it – or use a move to folder option that may be in your mail program. A bit more manual, but it does the same job.
Want to take it further?
If you want to, you can go beyond one Archive folder and set up specific ones for “Project X”, “Tax filings”, “Travel”, “Family”, “Insurance”… whatever fits your needs.
That’s a great next step once your inbox is “clean” and you want another challenge – but it’s not required to get the benefit of a cleaner inbox. A single Archive folder is a completely reasonable place to have when you’re coming from a single inbox which holds everything right now.
I personally even have different folders and automations for “Keep for a year”, “Keep for eight years” and others, but that’s just because I want to keep my storage lean.
What about the newsletters and information emails?
That one’s a tricky one for many people who want or need lots of information. So much great information, so little time to read. And it has to be still “acted on”, right? So it belongs in the inbox…?
My suggestion: if you have more than you can read in a regular day or two, make a label or folder for it. File it there, and visit it when you have a block of time, or some extra time.
Except the information that you really need to read very soon. That can stay in your inbox. Just make sure you don’t overextend your generosity in granting that status.
This isn’t “Inbox Zero” and how to get started
Just to be clear, I’m not telling you to obsessively empty your inbox every day. That’s a different goal, and not one I’m particularly fond of. It’s just too much of a load for me personally.
What you’re actually after is a list of things that still need your attention, without anything extra sitting around “hiding” the important stuff. Less to filter every time you glance at it, less chance of missing something because it was buried under stuff you have already dealt with.
And you can also Flag or Star particularly important e-mails in your inbox as well. A small extra for that really important stuff not to miss.
So take a look at your inbox. Anything sitting there that’s already done? File it or delete it. Start with the newest items to get the fastest benefit with the least amount of work.
Don’t feel like you have to start at the beginning of time to get organized. Start now and go forward.
Your inbox is not an archive, it’s a to do list – so let it act like one.
Mark Krieger helps small businesses to create systems for success - both on the IT and operations side.www.makbiz.ca