Would you rather walk on hot coals (oh hey Tony Robbins) or organize your email inbox?
We are about to turn your email inbox from painful to manageable and dare I say a pleasure to open.
If your searching for topics on organizing your inbox, I’m guessing right now your inbox feels overwhelming, scattered and chaotic. Not to mention out of control and a total pain in the butt.
If you feel this way, these are the simple steps that I used to clear my own inbox and how I show digital CEOs or their executive assistants how to clean out their inboxes so that it feels calm and in control. woohoo
Does the thought of having an organized inbox send you into thoughts of a happy jig? I know right, the joy of it all.
An email inbox that is chaotic will cause a waste of time and energy.
Your email inbox should be treated as a tool in your online business, it should not be where you spend the bulk of your time. Here are the simple steps for a clean email inbox, therefore giving you the steps you need to finally organize your email inbox.
Clear The Clutter
The dreaded backlog
This is real, the dreaded backlog that’s inside your email. I’ve logged into accounts that were pushing 100k in unread email, yes unread email. I know how overwhelmed I feel looking at that number, but there is hope.
Create a Folder
Move all the emails that are older than one to two months old into a folder. Name it what you like Old Emails
Dreaded Backlog
Lord, please help me,
Really whatever makes you smile.
Unsubscribe
As an online entrepreneur, you know that having people on your email list that do not open and read your email affects your stats. Do everyone a favor and just unsubscribe to these lists.
A couple of options here. One is to sign up at unroll.me. This is a slick little application that will sort through your emails and roll up all your newsletters into one email a day or you can have them unsubscribe for you too.
Another is to create a folder to put these into as your sorting through your inbox. When you’re sitting in front of the TV, go through the folder and start unsubscribing.
This is how I personally handle it, but my email inbox is pretty clean.
You’re in charge of your to-do list, not your email inbox
You start your day full of energy and excitement ready to tackle everything on your to-do list.
But, you make the mistake of opening your email inbox first thing in the morning before you do anything else.
Suddenly, you have all these demands on your time that aren’t in alignment with your goals or project for your business.
If you want to get into your email inbox right away in your day. Do that but do it with the understanding that you’re sorting only:
Do – if it will take 2 minutes or under
Delegate
Defer to later when you can schedule the appropriate time on your calendar
Delete
You get 15 minutes to do this, don’t get on caught on a runaway train. In and out.
For the items that have been deferred to later. Send a quick reply and let them know it has been received and will be completed by [insert date here].
Or one of my favorite time protection tips, turn on your auto-reply with your business policy regarding email. It can be this simple, hmm maybe something like it.
Greetings,
Your email message has been received. Our normal office hours are [insert office hours] and we will be back in touch within [insert hours here] business hours. Thank you for your patience. We appreciate you.
Schedule time on your calendar when you’ll go through your email inbox. Put it on your calendar as an action.
Labels and Filters make for a clean inbox
Setting up labels and filters is the first step to an organized inbox. In the past, I've created a number of labels, but I've scaled that back a bit. 98% of the time if you go looking for an email, likely you’ll search for a keyword or person before you go and look for it. If that’s not the case, how are you finding those emails? Searching is quick and easy.
Here are the best labels or folders that I’ve found work for me:
0-Immediate
1-Action
2-Active
3-Hold
Finance
Finance/Payable
Finance/Receivable
Review
Unsubscribe
Any specific folders that are needed in your business. Such as client or product folder.
Another option for inbox filtering is the Eisenhower Matrix for email. The folders would be
Q1: Urgent & Important
The action for this is Do
Q2: Not Urgent & Important
The action for this is to Defer for Later or Schedule
Q3: Urgent & Not Important
The action for this is to Delegate the email to a team member
Q4: Not Urgent & Not Important
The action for this is to Delete or Archive the email.
Let's talk about these labels or folders and the purpose they serve.
If you notice I have a number in front of a few of the labels. You may also use a character, such as an exclamation point or dash. It’s really your preference, you can change these later if need be.
0-Immediate
Immediate is the emails that must have immediate action, as in less than 24 business hours to complete or respond.
1-Action
Action is the emails that require action by you but doesn’t require immediate action.
2-Active
Active is to store the emails for active projects that are getting a number of emails. Generally speaking, I would suggest creating a filter to put them directly into the active folder. The filter can be on an email address or subject. As a result, you know where to go when looking for an active project.
3-Hold
Hold is for emails for meetings, travel, reservations, activities. Usually, anything you need to hold for a later time. Hence they are tied to a specific date or an agenda that will no longer be needed after the event has taken place. I actually named this folder Waiting Room in my inbox.
Finance
Finance is used to hold the emails that need to have an action done with them. Such as added into your accounting software or anything that may take longer than a couple of minutes to complete. Once the action has taken place, the email can be moved to either the payable or receivable sublabel/folder pending what it is.
Review
Review is for emails that do not have a timeframe as to when they need to be reviewed. This is where I put the marketing emails that I like to skim and archive.
Ashlyn from Ashlyn Writes calls her folder Read At Leisure which I think is a cute name.
Unsubscribe
Unsubscribe, is for all those emails that you signed up for but no longer read. This folder can either be manually added to or a filter can be created.
Although, I’ve done it both ways, personally, I prefer to manually add these when I’m sorting through my emails. Since some of the marketing emails will be added to my review folder to be skimmed later and possibly archived.
Inbox Applications
You have options, options and more options when it comes to inbox applications. I can’t even remember all the inbox applications I’ve tried out. At the present time, I regularly use Spark and Kiwi as they both have a certain set of features that I like to use. Do not be scared to try different applications, you need to figure out what works for you. You have so, so many possibilities!
Why I like Spark
I like Spark because it has an app for my iPhone, while Kiwi is for my desktop. I can pin emails, save canned responses, schedule emails, and have emails come back into my inbox.
Not to mention, they also have a paid option for teams to chat back and forth on emails. One other feature is Quick Reply this option allows you to set up canned responses that can be sent with a click of the mouse.
For example, this can be used to send a quick email to let your client know that you’ve received the email and will take a look at the request. It is handy dandy.
Why Kiwi
Kiwi brings your Gmail to your desktop and if you have multiple Gmail accounts they receive tabs to jump back and forth with.
Kiwi, together with Boomerang you’re able to have a number of the same features as Spark. Including, setting up emails to be sent at a later time or to snooze an email to review later.
Get out of your inbox
As an online entrepreneur, it’s important that you get out of your inbox. After all, your work should not be driven by the emails that you receive.
Instead, it’s best to block time to work on your email. Schedule when you’ll check and sort your emails.
As an entrepreneur, it’s important that you plan and schedule inbox time. Otherwise, you’ll find that you’re using it as a procrastination tool instead of revenue-generating activities.
To begin with sort your inbox when it’s first opened. Everything gets filed in the correct label or folder so that it is completed in the correct time block.
It is possible to get a clean inbox, it just takes a bit of time to clear out the clutter. Once you have the system in place email is so much more than an unproductive time waste.
Little Side Note
We forget that time is our most valuable non-renewable resource. Once we use our time we can never get it back. Focus on aligned action that will move your business ahead.
✁ Just a Snippet
Here is just a snippet of the important points, you know for the skimmer in you. 🤪
- Share this with your Executive Assistant as a starting point to organize your inbox.
- Your inbox is a tool in your business to be utilized.
- If you haven't read it in two months how important is it – really?
- Unsubscribe to marketing emails that should not be your priority Digital CEO.
- Time to review your and organize your email inbox should be planned.
- Labels and Filters are your best friend to have an organized email inbox.
- Find an Email Application that works for you.
- As a Digital CEO your time needs to be focused on revenue-generating activities.
This post was originally published on December 24, 2019, and has been freshened up a bit on August 17, 2021.
