Getting the Most Out of E-mail (Part 1)
Dealing With the Volume

I have been using email since 1987.

In some ways, it was a lot worse in those days. You had to "hand address" the "to" line. In other words, you had to specify the series of hosts you had to go through to get to your destination. Our local server contacted the next server "upstream" at 1200 baud 6 times a day! Mail was slow (it took up to two days to get delivered) and messages were plain text only and small. Mail programs were primitive and took some programming knowledge to use efficiently.

In some ways it was a lot better in those days. If you got more than a half dozen emails from off site in a day, you were busy. Spam did not exist.

Email is about half way between a phone call and a memo. It arrives with the timeliness of a phone call, but has the permanence of a memo.

Here are some tips on how to manage your email:

Schedule Your Reading Time

• Unless you are expecting a hot email, you do not have to interrupt what you are doing to read an email as soon as it comes in. Schedule reading for specific times of the day, such as 8 AM, 10 AM and 4 PM or maybe at the top of the hour.

Sort

• Read the subject lines of the emails. This will keep you from answering an email that has already been answered by someone else. Generally, you will want to read the latest email first. Then you can delete earlier versions quickly because you already know "the rest of the story" as Paul Harvey would say.

Triage

• Look up and down the list of emails and separate them into categories:
  
  
  • Delete now. Obviously, you don't want to read spam. You can pretty well tell from the subject or the return address if something is junk mail. Go up and down your list and delete them immediately. Don't even bother opening them.
    
    
  • Handle now. Then open each email (oldest version first - see above) and make a quick scan of it. This will give you a sense of order in which to respond to emails. You certainly don't want to go through in a linear fashion. It's OK to close an email and decide you need to open it again in the same session. Sort these messages into:
    
    
    • Delete now. You might not have caught all the spam by reading the subject line.
      
      
    • Must answer now. The really critical email from the boss. Be honest with yourself. Not every email you get is so critical that it must be answered now.
      
      
    • Can answer now. These are emails that can be dispensed with a quick and simple answer. Answer and delete or answer and save in a folder. Either way, get them off your plate and out of your mailbox.
      
      
    • Save. These are emails that you feel that you need to keep, but do not need to respond. Put them in a save folder.
      
      
    • Answer later. Put these into a folder called "To Do" or some similar name. This will clean up the incoming mail folder.
      
      
    • Optional. These are emails from your old college roommate, or whomever that you do wish to answer, but they are not job-related or critical task items. You may leave them until lunchtime or even until the weekend. Put these in an "optional" folder.

Use Folders

• I have already mentioned using folders for save, optional and answer later. The save folders can be further broken down into meaningful categories by department or by function. This practice makes it easier to find an email later. Some examples are:

• Most of my folders are named after projects.
  
  
• Some of my folders are named after organizations or departments. For example, all policy emails I've received went into a folder called "HR."
  
  
• Some folders are named after people, For example, "The Boss."
  
  
• I have a "Temp" folder. This is a good place to toss those things you don't know how to categorize, but are too important to throw away. Go through this folder about once a month and delete those things that are no longer "hot." Move things you really want to keep to an archive folder.
  
  
• It's OK to have a folder called "Miscellaneous" but if it has a particular topic that keeps coming up, then perhaps it's time to create a new folder. Conversely, it's OK to delete or archive a folder when the discussion in that area seems to have gone away.

Use Filters

• Most mailers have a way to filter the mail according to rules. For example, I have a filter rule in my Outlook that takes returned emails and routes them to a returned folder. Generally I look at this folder only once or twice a day to see who didn't get my mail and why.

• You may want to filter mail from the boss to a special folder, or mail that relates to a special topic to a specific folder. You can set up filters to forward and delete mail to your home account. Similarly you can have mail received by a specified account routed to a folder. I used this technique to get personal mail at work and automatically route it to the optional folder.

Delegate

• If you are lucky enough to have a dedicated administrative assistant, you can set up some mailers to grant that person access to your email so it can be pre-screened. This is not an option for most of us.

Review

• Take time out about once a month to look at your folders. Do a scan of all mail that's 6 months old or older. Do you still need it? Delete it if not. Your system administrator will like you if you do.

Archive

• If you think you need to keep mail for historical purposes, but you don't think you have immediate use for it, you can archive it. Your system administrator will like you if you do.