15. Email Management Tips: 3 Best Practices for Handling Your Inbox
Episode 15
Does your email inbox look like the Wild Wild West? Or are you a follower of the Inbox Zero cult club? 😉
Regardless of your inbox’s current condition, I’m here to share 3 email management best practices that are foundational to using email as an effective communication tool. And to boot, in a way that doesn’t stress you out.
In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter Podcast, I teach you critical email management tips that will increase your clarity, organization and performance. Um, yes please!
The tips are geared to both students and working professionals, so if you’re either of those, you’re in the right place.
Other Episodes Mentioned:
→ Episode 5: Secrets of a Good Task Management System
→ Episode 11: The 6 Most Valuable Skills for School and Work
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Email Management Tips: 3 Best Practices for Handling Your Inbox
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The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I am choosing not to spend my time fixing them. :)
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[00:00:00] If somebody asked me to create a list of skills that I wish they taught in school, that list would be so very long.
And on that list would be email management.
I strongly believe that basic email management skills should be taught perhaps as early as middle school and absolutely most definitely in high school.
Why? Cause I classify email under two key categories of skills: communication and organization.
Both of these are skills that not only do students need to succeed in the classroom, but working professionals need to succeed in their careers.
In episode 12, I talk about how organization and communication are two of the six most valuable skills that I argue are essential for students and working professionals.
In today's episode, we're going to talk about email management strategies. That can improve the way you organize information communicate with others and maintain a sense of [00:01:00] control over probably the most important portal of your digital space.
If your email inbox scares you, you don't know what to do with the thousands of emails accumulated in there or you simply feel like you can never keep up, or respond quick enough or the right way to the onslaught of emails that seem to flood you every day, then this episode is for you.
Also an announcement that this podcast now has its own YouTube channel! Learn and work smarter at YouTube is here. Previously, I had put all of the podcast episodes on my SchoolHabits YouTube channel, but I decided to remove them from there and split them and they exist on their own channel.
If case you noticed that the videos were missing. If you haven't seen that yet, I would love to subscribe because my ego has taken a hit with this brand new channel and a little baby amount of subscribers.
But anyways, all of that fun is out of the way. And I am ready to get started on our conversation about email.
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You're going to walk away from today's episode with three practical strategies that you can begin using right away to get better control of your email inbox.
The tips will apply if you're in school or if you're in the workforce, because in both contexts, email serves the same purpose, which is to communicate.
Specifically to distribute or solicit information. That's really the whole purpose of email.
Now keeping that primary function of email in mind, we can walk straight into my first tip, which is to remember that email is not a task management system.
A [00:03:00] common mistake that I see students and professionals make all the time is to use their inbox as a way to keep track of tasks.
Now that is a mistake.
It often leads to chaos and unreliability and poor performance due to lost or forgotten information that really does belong in a true task management system.
If you need help creating a true task management system, I talk all about that in episode five.
I'll leave that link in the show notes and in the description box, if you're watching this video, because we're not going to get into task management strategies in today's episode.
Okay. But rather my intention with this tip is to remind you that email is no place to store tasks and obligations.
But here's where it gets a little clunky.
Because email is a communication tool.
We often receive tasks or information about tasks via our inbox.
So I get that it feels like simple [00:04:00] to leave that information in there for the sake of reducing the step. Right? Like I get that and I'm tempted to do that sometimes too. But again, this is where so many people go wrong. So the strategy that I want you to try behind email management is to extract information from emails and put it in your task management system or on your calendar.
Let me slow down and back up for a minute to explain that the two most common and urgent things that we get in emails is information related to tasks that we need to do or something that is time-sensitive, right?
Or a related to a date or a calendar or something like that.
And it's absolutely crucial that we get in the practice of extracting task-based and time-based information from our emails and move it to a dedicated task management or time management system, depending on what the information is.
And yes, that means that you have to have a task management and a time management system.
Alright. [00:05:00] Quick reminder that a task management system is some kind of list at its very core.
It's just a list. It can be as complicated or as simple as you want. It can be analog, it can be digital. It doesn't matter.
And time management system involves calendars. So, what does this look like in real life?
Good question. Let's look at an example.
Let's say that you were a college student and you get an email from a professor letting you know that Friday's class is canceled. Uh, but your research project is still going to be due that day. Okay. But in the email, she tells you that the deadline, the new deadline is no longer a 3:00 PM, which is when PLAs was going to be.
But now it's midnight that night giving you an extra. Math nine hours.
One might be tempted to look at this email and say, cool, like, thanks for the information. I'll remember that.
But that's where the derailment happens. Okay. Instead, we need to extract that information from the email and put it where it belongs.
So that means writing in your [00:06:00] task management system, work on paper on the days leading up to Friday's due date.
It also means writing “midnight deadline” on Friday night on your calendar.
Now you are welcome to leave that email alive and well in your inbox, you don't have to delete it. But right now, the information is where it belongs: task management and time management systems.
Speaking of deleting emails, we will talk about inbox zero at the end of this episode. And that is something that I'm asked a lot about. And so I figured that I would address the concept of inbox zero, and whether it can be helpful or not, but I'll get to that at the end of the episode.
Now. At first, this might seem like a clunky workflow, right? You get an email and has the stuff in it that you need. And it's like, oh, I'm telling you to like pull the stuff out, put it in your systems. And now you have to go look at your task management system and you don't look at your calendar to find the information that just existed in an email.
But keep in mind that I am only giving you an example in the context of a simple college student life. Now I'm not saying [00:07:00] easy college student life, but simple.
And I'm also using, in my example, only one email. Okay. Just to prove my point, just to illustrate my point.
But we all know that that's not what email is really like.
In reality in the professional world and even in, in some schools situations, right. We get so many emails, so much information every single day.
So the little illusion we tell ourselves that like, oh, thanks for the information. I'll remember this right. It's just that. It's just an illusion. We have to stop telling ourselves that we'll remember the information is an email cause it's going to get buried.
Now another example in a professional context would be, if you get an email from a manager, maybe asking you to be the note taker on, I don't know. Um, next Monday's meeting.
Awesome. So that email communicates a task to be done as well as a time it needs to be done by.
All right. So what do we do?
No, not just leave the email in there.
We extract both of those pieces of [00:08:00] information and we put them where they belong. So you were asked to be the note-taker, right? For a meeting. There are tasks connected to that? Alright.
Is there a team note sheet that everybody uses and you need to go find it on some like shared drive, right.
Have you planned whether you're going to take digital notes or paper notes? And if so, like what system are you going to use?
Do you need to look at the last months meeting notes, to maybe refresh what was covered then so that your current notes have more context?
These are all tasks related to Monday's tasks that will need to be thought of ahead of time.
And then somewhere on your calendar. You need to put the time of the meeting.
And you might want to add in some buffer time so that you get there a few minutes ahead of time and, you know, make sure that you have wifi connection if you're taking digital notes.
Make sure you get a seat that's close to the presentation board so you can actually see what the heck you're taking notes on.
These things will go on your calendar.
Now, let's say that your manager sent you this email on a Wednesday. All right. And that's five days before the meeting, right? Five days. It would most likely get [00:09:00] buried under a hundred emails between now and then. But if you extracted that information and you put it in your task management system and then you made a habit of checking every single day, you'll stay on top of what needs to get done and when you need to do it.
All right. Moving onto email management. Tip number two.
This is my favorite philosophy for life. Keep it simple.
Now, back in the day when I was first bit by the productivity bug and I went down a rabbit hole, I encountered what today
I have heard other people call bro productivity.
I love that expression. I haven't didn't make it up. I love it.
This is a brand of productivity hacks and really complicated systems usually. But hacks is the right word here, that promise to shave like. Um, millisecond off your workflow.
Like it wasn't even worth it. First of all, I was like, cool, my gosh.
And then I realized it wasn't cool at all.
Because the systems were so complicated. It's like Oh, build this crazy email rule and this'll [00:10:00] happen automatically. The best systems are the simplest. And I want to say that again. The best systems are the simplest.
So when it comes to managing your inbox, like the actual interface and the organization and the folders and things like that, the structure of what's inside, keep it simple. So what do I mean?
Whether you using Gmail or Outlook or a Yahoo, email service providers provide some kind of, you know, tagging or filters or labeling or pinning functionality. Okay. Call it whatever you want.
They all have them, but it's the basic idea that you can set up automatic rules for incoming emails.
So they go go automatically into like a certain folder or a tagged or certain way or something. Um, maybe they go through a filter, they go somewhere special, whatever.
Or maybe you don't have it set up to go someplace automatically, but you have some idealistic vision of yourself ambitiously, skimming every email that comes in and instantly tagging it or labeling it or dragging it into some [00:11:00] beautiful color-coded, coded folder.
Now, unless you already have an established system like this and it works brilliantly for you. And I want you to be honest about that.
Is it really working? Okay. Then this approach is not something that I recommend for students and most working professionals. I said earlier in this episode, that email is a way of communication, right? It's a communication tool. And one foundational principle of good communication is that it should be simple and clear.
So I suggest that we apply that principle to how we actually manage our inbox. Keep it simple and clear.
So I think the simplest approach, like the actual absolute simplest way to go about this at all is just to have a primary inbox and maybe at the most one or two separate email inbox folders, if needed.
So that means that most emails would stay in your primary inbox and you would intentionally, [00:12:00] if needed, drag certain emails. of a certain category that, you know, depends on your job and, you know, your specific needs, into a separate folder in your inbox.
Again, this would depend on what your needs are, but in general, no matter if you're a student or you're in the workforce, having a separate inbox folder labeled resources can be a really good idea.
And then anything in addition to that, any additional folders would depend on what you need. All right. Let me show you how this resource folder could work.
Let's say you get 20 emails a day. Let's say 10 of those emails are junk. So you delete them right away. Let's say five of those emails have tasks inside. So that would mean you extract those tasks from the original email and put them into your task management system.
And then it's up to you if you want to keep that email in there or delete it.
But then let's say that three emails are time-sensitive.
So you extract that information and put it in your calendar. What number am I up to?, 2?. 18. Okay. Oh my gosh, so [00:13:00] much math. And then let's say the remaining two emails just have information in them that you might need in the near future, maybe in the far future, but you don't need it like right now.
So maybe it's an attachment you might need, some internal memo that you're eventually going to need, or look at something like that. That's what I would consider a resource. And I would bring that email over into a folder called resources.
Okay. That is just a suggestion. You do not have to do this, but is this a suggestion that I share with many of my adult working professional clients and they find it helpful.
But my point is I strongly advise against creating lots and lots of places for emails to go.
That becomes too complex. Have your primary inbox and then one or two other destinations at most now.
Another feature that many email service providers have is the pinning feature. I personally use this in my Outlook account. I have a couple of Gmail accounts and an Outlook account.
But something I like about Outlook is that it has, you know, [00:14:00] G-mail might have it too, I don't know, I only use it in Outlook, but it has the ability to pin an email to the top of the email feed or whatever it's called.
I use this feature intentionally and only for emails that are currently active or that I know I need to address in the next two to five days.
And then when I'm done addressing that email - whatever's in the email- and the communication has ended, I unpin it.
All right. Some other ideas for additional inbox folders in addition to that resources folder- I feel like I'm jumping around, but whatever - might be all emails related to something currently happening, maybe like a big company initiative or something, or if you're planning an event.
So then every time you get an email that's related to that company initiative or that event or whatever, you would drag it into the inbox. And then when that company initiative or that event, whatever is over, then you can get rid of the folder without getting rid of all of the emails that were inside.
I mean, you can, it's up to you if you want to keep them.
Personally, I have a separate folder for anything related to banking in my business. So anytime that I get a [00:15:00] receipt and invoice. Uh, something related to taxes bills, right? Anything related to money, I drag it into a folder called banking. All right. I am just throwing ideas around here.
And again, you're going to have to figure out what works for you. But as you experiment, and as you figure out what works for you, I want you to stay focused on the principle of simplicity. Less is more. Especially when it comes for creating destinations for emails to go.
All right. So now onto our third email management tip, and that is to create some kind of email routine or system.
Listen, email is a very powerful tool, but the downside is that it has the potential to control us. Email has the potential to become a source of stress, of obligation, anxiety, pressure.
It can be full of demands, tasks, people asking for a time, and it can be a reminder of all of the open loops that we have going on in our life.
And that is why I think it's important to have some kind of [00:16:00] routine or system that can put some structure and limits around how we manage email.
Now the benefit of doing this is that number one, it can help prevent email from getting an emotional grip on us and on our time.
And then number two, it can prevent email from becoming so overwhelming that you avoid it altogether.
I see that all the time. People are like, my inbox is too crazy. It's too. I don't even touch it now. I'm missing email... not a good thing. Okay. We need to create some kind of routine or system.
So I'm going to go over to strategies that you might want to think about in terms of creating structure around email.
Number one. Don't check it constantly.
Now checking email all day long, whenever you get the impulse to check, it is an absolute productivity and focus killer.
Let's say you're working on something cognitively demanding. Okay. And you get this impulse to check your email and, and you take nine seconds to go over to your inbox and check it just like nine seconds.
And your intention is to come right back to the project that you were working on. I mean, it's just nine seconds. What's the big deal, right?
[00:17:00] Wrong, absolutely wrong.
The nine seconds that you just broke your concentration on the thing that you were working on is enough to derail your entire focus for so much longer than original nine seconds.
It was not just nine seconds. The time it takes us to re-immerse ourselves in a task, even after just a break of nine seconds -I'm picking a random number here -is so much longer than we think.
Also our inbox is so full of stimulation and triggers, which means that even if you return to your work within nine seconds, a part of your cognitive resources is still thinking about what it saw in the inbox.
Okay. So instead of checking email all day long with no systematic approach to doing so, I suggest he create some rules around when you'll intentionally go into your inbox and handle whatever's in there- in the wild west.
A good rule of thumb that I suggest for most of my students is to check email twice a day on Monday through Friday, and then, you know, [00:18:00] Whatever you do in the weekends.
It's a little trickier, to be honest with working professionals, because you will likely need to check your email more than twice a day, but it still should not be an all day event.
Maybe once when you arrive at the office, maybe once when you return from your lunch break and then once at the end of the day.
Now you might be thinking no way.
Like I need to check my email way more than that. All day long people need me. Right. Maybe you do. Maybe you do.
Maybe your circumstance is different and maybe it's exceptional. But before you declare that and put your foot down, I want you to ask yourself if that's really true.
Will the world actually go up in flames if you delay checking your email inbox for a few hours, right? Will anybody even notice or care.
I personally checked my email every day. But I scheduled that activity into an admin block that I have deliberately put on my schedule. It's all very intentional.
I also do the bulk of my email management on Mondays and Fridays, and then only [00:19:00] respond to quick urgent things on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.
I know this doesn't work for everybody, but I have experimented and that's what I found works for me. So that's what I'm sharing with you.
And I want you to experiment with things, to figure out what works for you.
Now another tip for building structure around emails is to follow the D E R method.
I totally made that name up. Yes I did, but I like acronyms and it is easy to remember.
The D E R method. Okay. And that would be delete. Extract. And reply.
If you are in a moment where you are choosing intentionally to go into your inbox and handle whatever's in there, maybe during an admin block, you essentially have three options for what to do with every email in there.
You can delete it. You can extract it. Or you can reply to it.
All right. So delete. Obviously you want to delete any email that's junk or unnecessary [00:20:00] or spam or repetitive.
And there's extract, which is E and that's what we already talked about earlier.
Most emails will have either a task-based or time-based information in them. So you're going to have to go in and extract tasks and put them on your task management system or extract time-based information and input them on your calendar.
Okay. That's extract that's E.
And there's R R stands for reply. So some emails, believe it or not, we actually have to reply to.
Now this podcast episode is not about best practices for writing emails.
That actually is in an upcoming episode.
But if there's an email that you can reply to in two minutes or less, Do it.
If it's an email that you can't adequately reply to because you need more information, right? It's still good etiquette to reply to the person briefly and say, I got your email. I'll get you an answer shortly. Okay. Something like that.
It's not really good etiquette to just leave people hanging.
Okay. So again, that's D for delete [00:21:00] E. For extract and R for reply. The D E R method or. The Der Method. I don't know, trademark coming soon..
So quick review, let me go over the tips again so that they become ingrained because remember repetition is the key to learning.
Email management tip number one was don't use your inbox as a task management system.
You need to have some other separate way to manage your tasks.
Tip number two was to keep it simple. You don't need a million folders in there.
Tip number three is to create some kind of email routine or system.
Now I said at the beginning of this episode that I would talk real quickly about the concept of inbox zero.
This might be new to you.
Um, or maybe it's something that you've heard about. Maybe it's something that you even practice yourself. Now inbox zero would fall under in my opinion, that kind of bro mentality, bro productivity mentality that I talked about earlier.
Right? So that's [00:22:00] just my opinion. It's the idea that, to be the most productive and efficient, and you need to have zero emails in your inbox at all times, or at least by the end of the Workday.
I don't buy that. I am asked this question a lot when I work with my adult clients.
They asked me like, is this something that I suggest they do? Is it something that I recommend?
And my answer is almost always the same. You can do it if you want. But it is absolutely and completely unnecessary.
Now, listen, I am a self-proclaimed minimalist. I like empty drawers and blank spaces. And my favorite color is clear. I know. I confess that I know. And even I do not practice inbox zero.
I think it's more critical and directly related to productivity and being able to get your job done, whether you're a student or working professional, to have some practical ways to manage what's inside of your inbox.
I mean, I think how many emails we store in our [00:23:00] inbox and whether we delete them or not. Is irrelevant compared to what we do with the information that is inside those emails.
And that's what we covered here today.
So if you like the idea of inbox zero, and you are also, this is the kicker, also effectively managing what's inside those emails, and you're not just deleting them to like hack your way to inbox zero, then carry on my friend.
But if you have 10,000 emails currently in your inbox, but all the information that you need to do, your job is effectively extracted and stored somewhere and handled then I don't think it matters whether you delete the or keep the original emails.
Okay. That's just one of those things that you're, you're going to have to experiment and figure out yourself.
All right. That brings us to the end. I appreciate you. I appreciate that you have made it this far. Don't forget to head on over to the new Learn and Work Smarter YouTube channel.
The show notes to this podcast, including a [00:24:00] transcription, are on learnandworksmarter.com.
And remember, you can submit your questions for me to answer on future Q and A episodes by submitting your questions at LearnAndWorkSmarter.com. And as always, never stop learning.
