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Managing the inbox of your email can be transformed into an endless game. When you have managed to review all the emails in your inbox, and you think you can celebrate ... at that moment another email appears. And then another one.
Worst of all, is that the huge amount of emails we receive is greater than the time we have to take care of them. This becomes an even bigger problem when we let ourselves be overcome by the guilt that is generated when we do not respond to the messages right away, when we respond in a very dry way or when we do not even respond. If you are something like me, the latter is not even a viable option.
The reality is that there are more important things on our list of priorities than emails, but as professionals it is something we owe, and want, to control effectively. Do you want to spend less time in your inbox and more time doing things that really matter? ? I share these 12 tips that personally changed the way I manage my inbox.
12 tips to improve the management of your emails
- Cancel your subscriptions that you do not read. Seriously, without compassion.
Do you want to know what is the simplest way to keep your inbox to zero? Receive less emails The first step to having a more orderly inbox is to unsubscribe from all email lists that do not provide you with value regularly.
In fact, my recommendation is to cancel all subscriptions. Take a few days to think about it and then re-subscribe only to the newsletters that you really miss receiving. In this step you could consider converting any daily bulletin that you followed into a weekly one.
Canceling dozens (or hundreds?) Subscriptions to newsletters manually sounds very tedious. There are tools that can help you achieve it in just a few clicks. Unroll.me is my favorite. It is a free tool that allows you to cancel the subscriptions of all the bulletins that you no longer read. You can unsubscribe from all the newsletters at the same time (I recommend it) or you can choose and decide which subscriptions to cancel.
- Delete your email from any internal chain of a company or business in which you do not need to be.
Once you have canceled the subscription of external newsletters, it is time to evaluate the internal emails you receive frequently. I understand that it may cause you a bit of terror not to be aware of everything but is it really necessary to receive notifications of emails every time the sales team closes a transaction or when a member of the marketing team reports an error?
If the answer is not a resounding "yes", delete for your own benefit your email address from any list in which you are included. If that makes you feel too uncomfortable, be sure to create a folder in your email and send those emails there automatically. (To configure the folders, you can create filters in Gmail or rules in Outlook ).
- Understand (and accept) that you can not answer absolutely all the messages.
This was the advice that took me the longest to adapt but a big part of keeping the inbox (and your sanity) under control is to change your mentality a bit about the emails. Only you can decide what things deserve your limited time and attention. You must understand that there is simply no way to be able to respond to every email that arrives in your inbox and, much less, to read them all.
I love how Merlin Mann explains it : "Stop thinking of emails as precious family heirlooms and start treating them like liters of milk. Perishable milk, with an expiration date that loses freshness every day until it starts to smell strange and should be thrown away. Believe me, there will always be more ».
Therefore, if you look at an email and you are convinced that you will never answer it, archive it. Or, even better, delete it. As Mann says : "Trust your instincts, listen to them and stop trying to be perfect."
- Keep your answers brief whenever possible.
When you have to answer an email, you will discover that, in most cases, it is not necessary to elaborate the perfect answer. Usually only a few sentences or, in some cases, a few words will suffice. If you ignored an email for a few days and it contained a task to be done, answering with a concise question like "do you still need it?" Could save you a lot of time.
Do not feel guilty about sending short emails. If you are concerned that someone can mislead your concise emails, notify colleagues with whom you exchange messages more frequently about this situation. Tell them that, since you want to spend less time in your inbox and more time at work, you plan to reduce the number of words in your emails.
As you manage to erase all those emails that you do not need to read or respond to, you will get more time to write the emails that do deserve more elaborate answers.
- Use answers that you have previously written.
What type of emails do you write continuously and do not need personalization?
For example, I usually recommend people to consult the page where Debounce.io Inbound Marketing Certifications are found. I used to write individual emails for each person interested in certification, which involved writing some sentences, searching and copying the link, between other repetitive activities. Now I only use ten minutes a day to send replies that I wrote previously with the "stored responses" function of Gmail.
Gmail, Outlook and other email clients offer this option of stored responses.
Configure the answers stored in Gmail.
Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner and select "Settings."
Click on the «Labs» tab, look for the «Standard responses» option and then select «Enable». Scroll to the end and click on "Save changes".
To create a stored response, write a new email and click on the small arrow that appears in the lower right corner. Select "Standard responses" and then "New predesigned response." There you can assign a name to your new standard response, write it and save it. When you want to use it, simply go back to that little arrow, select "Standard responses" and click on the one you want to use. (You can get more information about this on the Google website ).
Configure the responses stored in Outlook.
In Outlook, the best option I could find was to set the responses stored as "Signatures". That way, when you reply to an email, you can choose the appropriate "signature" and, instead, the stored response will appear. Next I'll show you how to do it.
In the Outlook menu, click on «Preferences». Under «Email», select «Signatures».
Click on the + icon to add a new signature.
A new signature appears under «Name of the signature» with the label «Untitled». Double-click on "Untitled" and then enter a new name for your stored answer.
In the right panel, write the text you want included in the signature, that is, write your stored answer.
Once you have created the stored response as a signature, you can add it to a new email by clicking on the body of the message, choose the "Message" tab, click on "Signatures" and choose the signature you want to add from the list (you can get more information on the Outlook help page ).
- Adopt the one-click rule.
This rule may seem simplistic, but it will help you save a lot of time. A "single click" refers to using a single click to open an email. Once it is open, decide at that precise moment what you want to do: reply, forward, move to a folder, archive or delete.
The idea here is not to open an email, read it and decide that you will see it later to continue with another activity. That is a bad habit that will ensure that your inbox is always full and you, stressed.
- Sort emails with "stars" in Gmail.
I told you before the council that cost me t ork adapt, now I tell you my favorite. This tip changed my way of managing emails in Gmail, I went from seeing my inbox as an endless accumulation of emails to a list of pending and things to do, and if you are something like me, you enjoy making lists and you feel satisfied When you have done each one, this is the advice for you.
The premise is the following: in Gmail, you will configure several inboxes and assign a name to each, such as: «Requires action / response» and «Waiting for response». Your general inbox will appear on the left and your tagged inboxes (which Gmail calls "panels") will appear on the right, as you can see below:
You will use what Gmail calls "stars" (similar to Gmail labels, but better) to classify each of the emails that arrive in your inbox.
Each time you receive a new email in your inbox, you should:
Reply the emails you can immediately.
Label the emails you need to see later by marking them with the corresponding star.
Archive or delete any email that is not important or urgent.
In the end, you will archive everything. Your inbox will continue to zero and everything else will have been designated to the corresponding panel, archived or deleted.
Do you use Outlook?
SimplyFile is a free organization tool that will help you sort emails into folders. When you receive an email, all you have to do is drag it to the appropriate folder. You can organize the messages you receive in your inbox or those you send, which you can archive while you are sending.
- Delegate emails to other people with a collaboration tool.
It is likely that sometimes you receive emails that you think someone else could manage better. In those cases, you can forward the mail or speed up the process by sharing it with someone on your team who uses an email collaboration tool.
There is a wide variety of email collaboration tools. If you use Gmail, Hiver is an excellent option: it allows you to share the Gmail labels (and, therefore, share folders) with other users. You can even use it to assign tasks, delegate emails and, if you wish, also monitor their status. If you need to add a quick note explaining what happens in a chain of emails, you can do it directly in that tool.
- Use the "yesterbox" approach.
«Yesterbox» is a methodology to manage your inbox created by Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh. This approach is similar to the "zero inbox" approach, with the exception that you work with all the emails from yesterday and consider them as the list of things you should do for today.
The fundamental idea is this: every morning you have a fixed number of emails to answer, instead of having an endless number of new incoming emails. Once you finish managing the emails from yesterday, you end the task of the emails for that day.
You will classify incoming emails in folders with the labels "Yesterbox", "Today", "Requires action", "Waiting for response", etc. As you receive emails, tag them as appropriate. However, the real task of managing these emails is assigned at the specific time of your calendar that you have selected to manage yesterday's emails. In the end, your Yesterbox will end up being a list of things to do with static tasks.
That liberating feeling of completely completing a task is what makes this method so attractive; However, if your work requires that you take care of the emails as soon as you receive them, this is not a good method for you.
- Set filters when you are on vacation.
Going on vacation feels great, but returning to work and finding an inbox full of emails is not at all pleasant. Filter settings are one way to manage your email workflow while you are not available for a long period of time.
This is the approach that Rebecca Corliss , the marketing director of debounce.io, discovered That worked very well for her in her one month sabbatical. Corliss used Gmail in this method, but you can adapt it for most email clients. In summary, this is what he did:
He created a new folder for his holidays.
Configured a filter that recognized any email sent to *@debounce.io. By including the asterisk in place of your actual mail, you were able to receive not only the emails that were sent to your work email address, but also the emails that were sent to the company aliases in which it was included.
Added a second filter that eliminated all irrelevant emails; For example, all the daily and weekly newsletters that I expected to receive, such as the updates of the metrics.
When he returned, he took care of all the emails that he had not read strategically. For example, he searched for the emails he wanted to answer first with a key search of his boss's email address.
When he dealt with those most urgent messages, he determined a deadline to review the rest of the emails and answered only those that were absolutely necessary.
- Set a specific time to leave your inbox at zero.
Dedicating specific periods to leave your inbox to zero should not be applied only when you go on vacation. It should be something you do in small batches every day and in larger batches every week, depending on how many new emails you receive.
What is the objective of working with batches of emails? Not having to deal with emails as soon as you receive them, as that could negatively affect your productivity and make you distract from projects and tasks that are much more important than a perfectly clean inbox.
Limit yourself to managing new emails during fixed periods every day. For example, the demand generation manager, Amanda Sibley, establishes a specific time of one hour in the morning and another in the afternoon to order her inbox. Try to make that work for you too.
- Use key combinations for direct access.
To make the process of reading, answering, filing and deleting emails much faster and more enjoyable, take advantage of all the key combinations offered by your email client. Below you will find some key combinations tips in Gmail and Outlook. If you use a different email client, do a quick Google search with the name of your email client + "key combinations".
Combinations of keys in Gmail:
To begin, you must activate the key combinations as follows:
Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner and select "Settings."
Click on the «General» tab, look for the option «Key combinations» and select «Enable key combinations». Scroll to the end and click on "Save changes".
Then return to the "Settings" screen via the gear icon, click on the "Labs" tab and search for "Custom Key Combinations" (from Alan S). Select "Enable." Scroll to the end and click on "Save changes".
Once you have activated the custom key combinations, a new tab will appear on your configuration screen with the name «Key combinations». Click on that option to know the default key combinations and customize the ones you want.