February 23rd 2009
Email inbox from 7000 to 23 in 30 minutes
It’s Monday morning. Before I start on client work for the week, I usually take some time to go over my schedule for the following five days.
One of my big outstanding to-do items was to do a clean up of my email inbox which I’ve just been “too busy” to get around to. Since Outlook has been crashing about five times a day on me, I figured it was time to do something with the 7000 messages in my inbox.
Over the summer I read David Allen’s fabulous book Getting Things Done, I just haven’t quite applied everything I learned after reading it yet. One of the great things Allen suggests in the book is to apply the 3 Ds to your inbox maintenance: Do it, Delegate it or Delete it. I seem to have a weird phobia about using the Delete key, and I always let me emails pile up.
So here’s how I managed to bring my inbox message count from 7000 to 23 this morning in the amount of time it took me to drink my morning coffee
I sorted my inbox by ‘From’ so all the senders were alphabetized. (I have all of my emails routed to my gmail account as a backup system, so I’m not too worried if I delete something of major importance when I do my regular clean up.)
Then I ruthlessly went through deleting en masse by sender. I had way too much junk to wade through (more than 600 Google Alerts, 400 Twitter messages and hundreds of other social networking notifications from various sites. Delete. I really have to set up some Outlook rules), I moved all messages from each sender to their appropriate folders (easy to drag and drop when they’re sorted by ‘From’), set up new folders, reviewed red-flagged items and found places for them (either delete bin or with a date/time reminder to trigger a look in the future).
The key to doing this is speed. You have to work fast or you’ll get lost in there all day. As I came across emails from new vendors, I just set up a new folder then and there and moved it over. Anything I knew I would never read got deleted. I also made notes about which newsletters and listservs I have to unsubscribe from.
Not sure why I keep getting so buried in emails and why I’m so poor at making new systems stick. I’m going to read Getting Things Done again – more slowly this time – and try to get this under control once and for all!!
If you haven’t read it you should. You can get it here:
Your email management is something that can easily be delegated to a Virtual Assistant. Just probably not this one. 
7 Comments »
Candy Beauchamp on 23 Feb 2009 at 10:29 am #
OMG. If I have more than 8 messages in my inbox, I get twitchy. 7000 would send me over the edge or into a corner in the fetal position mumbling “purge purge purge”
Why 8? That’s how many can be seen without scrolling.
I use Thunderbird, not Outlook. Rarely crashes. We’ll pretend it wasn’t the fact that you had SEVEN THOUSAND messages in your box and blame Microsoft. Hey, everyone does it!
Seriously though… good for you! I know people that let email pile up. It makes me a little bonkers. I have a gmail account I use for archive purposes too
It works great!
Brent Billock on 23 Feb 2009 at 10:55 am #
Sounds like a great start. The greatest hurdle to get over (and thanks to David Allen for getting this message through to me) is to realize your inbox is not your to-do list. If you treat it that way, it means you have to re-read and reinterpret each email over and over again when deciding what task you’ll tackle next.
Instead, emails belong in folders, just as you described. The important thing is that you make a decision before you file it. Either there’s no action necessary, there’s something you can do right now, or there’s something you should add to your to-do list or calendar.
Sounds like you’re off to a good start. Congratulations.
Jaime Mann on 23 Feb 2009 at 11:20 am #
Candy: It makes me bonkers too – the build up and crazy feeling of no control. I think what trips me up is having the gmail account where I tend to search for things because it’s so much easier.
Brent: Fabulous points! Thank you for commenting. It’s a very important point to get across that folders are key to a well maintained inbox.
Diane Coville on 23 Feb 2009 at 11:24 am #
That’s a really good start to a new week. Unresolved email can be daunting so I’m one of those who deal with it for about 1/2 hour before starting work and 1/2 hour before I shut down for the day.
I only use Outlook but soon I will be using Gmail as well for back-up.
I have my whole Outlook subdivided into folders in the same way that I have my files on the hard drive. I delete unnecessary stuff immediately. I read client’s emails immediately and if it requires action that I can’t do now, I mark it “unread”. All the stuff I send out gets filed immediately into the appropriate folder. And I have a Pending file where stuff goes that needs to be read but can be done whenever.
With this system, I rarely “lose” emails, “drop the ball” on client emails, or miss seminars/webinars notices that have been sent. Newsletters, as well, are put in a Newsletter file that would have the same status as my Pending file.
Works for me!
Diane L. Coville
ALERNATIVE OFFICE ASSISTANCE
Leila Wylie on 23 Feb 2009 at 5:14 pm #
Great tips! I’m definitely going to utilize them soon. Like tomorrow. I have about 2500 between four email accounts. Yikes!
Sally on 24 Feb 2009 at 12:07 am #
Wow Jaime, You and I woke up today and did the exact same thing… before even turning on my computer I pulled out the GTD book and started reading it again. I started my day determined to empty my in box and get back in to the GTD mode.
Although I did not have 7000 emails to go through because I have filters set up. All my newsletter and mailing list things go to a folder called Read Later – I read and/or empty that when I have spare minutes. I’ve set up a separate in box for each client so their emails actually never touch my in box… they are already pre-filed in to Client A, Client B, etc in boxes so when it’s time to deal with that client I am totally focused just on that client and not distracted by all the other emails. (By the way, Yvonne Weld is the one that gave me that idea and it works great!)
As for Twitter, Facebook and other notification type things, including anything I buy on the internet I have a special “junk” gmail set up that I use for that stuff and rarely check.
I accomplished my goal today! My in boxes are empty, my desk is clean and my 43 folder tickler file system is back in action!
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