(Image)
We live in a digital world today where we get more emails than ever. More than half the world’s population (over 4.2 billion people) were active email users in 2022. By the end of 2026, that figure is projected to go over 4.7 billion. 55 percent of consumers say email is their preferred digital channel for business communication.[1]
Given that email is now one of the main ways we communicate, it’s important to learn how to manage emails effectively. In this post I share 7 tips to do so.
1. Limit email processing to 2-3 times a day
There are two important rules to remember when it comes to email.
- The time you spend outside of email is when you get things done.
- The time you spend in your inbox is when you’re reacting to requests and facilitating stuff in general.
These rules don’t apply if email is a direct measurement of your output (like customer support, meaning you need to spend time in your inbox to get work done).
It’s okay to spend time on emails as and when necessary. The problem starts when you spend countless hours in your inbox thinking that you’re getting things done, when you’re really just fighting fire or doing Quadrant 1 tasks (important and urgent, but not as important as Quadrant 2 tasks). As a general rule, you should
- Switch off email alerts. This way, you don’t get your focus broken from what you’re doing right now. Instead read emails only when you’re ready to read them.
- Limit the time you spend on email in the morning. Morning is when you have your best energy. Do a quick check if needed, but don’t spend your best morning hours on email as it’ll set the tone for your entire day and nosedive your productivity. Start your mornings with your most important tasks instead.
- Process your email 2-3X a day. Process means sorting your emails, reading them in depth, and replying. You can check your mail multiple times a day if your work requires you to be in close loop of on-the-ground issues, but only process them 2-3X a day. The exception is if an email is urgent and important — reply right away, then get back to your high-impact tasks. I process my mail once a day, sometimes once every 2-3 days, as email is not where I get my most important work done. Your Quadrant 2, high-impact tasks should always be your priority.
2. Prioritize important email (which may not be new)
Not all emails are important — some are irrelevant. But people tend to recognize what’s new (hence prioritizing and reading new mail first, even replying to them quickly even though there are more important tasks to be done), not what’s important. That’s why social media is a noise chamber today — people get sucked in to respond to the urgent, but not the important.
Before you jump into your emails, consider their importance. In general, our work mail can be segmented into 3 categories:
- Category A: Your most important emails that will make a big difference in your Q2 goals. This typically makes up 10-20% of your mail.
- Category B: Important but not as important as A. These emails keep things going but will not dramatically change your goals/life. They form the bulk of your mail. This makes up 40-60% of your mail.
- Category C: Unimportant mail. Nice-to-know information, spam, time-wasters. Depending on your work, this makes up 20-30% of your mail.
A similar categorization applies for personal mail. An email from a close friend can be an A mail. An email from someone who has helped you before can be an A mail too. An email from someone who can benefit from your help can be an A or B mail. It depends on the context.
You want to give extra weight to the A emails, treat B emails as per normal, while ignoring C emails.
10% of my emails fall under A, 60% in B, and 30% in C. I reply to A quickly. With B emails, I reply over time, based on a mental evaluation of the time it’d take, urgency, and the time I have to reply. C emails are trashed or archived.
Use different treatment methods for your emails based on importance. If you do just this, your productivity will skyrocket.
3. Use folders, filters to sort your email
Back at my previous workplace, I had colleagues who didn’t organize their mail at all. They would just reply and put their mail in one big folder. While it made getting to emails quick at first, they would spend a lot of time clicking, searching, and searching again for mail later on. They couldn’t see emails filed by category but had to search for individual mail piece by piece. This gets worse as your volume of mail increases.
Take the time to set up a helpful folder structure and good email filters:
a) Folders (or Labels in Gmail). Identify the major categories for your mail, followed by sub-categories. Then create folders for them. This way you can easily click into a folder/sub-folder to see all the mail on that subject. More on using folders/labels: Gmail | Outlook
b) Email Filters (or Rules in Outlook). An email filter is a logic you set in your email client to automatically sorts new mail as it enters your inbox. Every filter has two parts: (1) the criteria to watch out for in an email, and (2) what your email client should do if the criteria is met. For example:
- If an email is sent from *@paypal.com → Move to Payments folder + Archive (so you don’t even see it in your inbox)
- If an email is sent from my-husbands-email@gmail.com → Move to Family folder
- If an email has the words “Team Update” in the Subject → Move to Updates folder + Star (to differentiate form others)
- If an email is from a blacklisted address (who keeps sending spam) → Delete (you can also block the person’s address in Gmail)
I have over 40 email filters and they sort my mail automatically, allowing me to get right to reading/replying when I log into my inbox. Whenever I receive emails that match a new pattern (such as when I subscribe to a new service), I create a new filter to file them into the appropriate folder.
What I save here isn’t just time, but the mental energy from thinking and sorting through trickles of mail. I use this time saved for my big tasks.
Analyze your emails. What emails do you often get? Set up filters for them.
- Watch my video tutorial on how I set up my email filters: How To Achieve Inbox Zero Using Email Filters [Video]
- Here’s an Outlook tutorial for setting rules.
4. Create templates for common emails
If you have mail that you send over and over, such as instructions to clients or customer replies, create templates to reuse them. Gmail has a Canned Responses feature for this purpose though I don’t find it intuitive — I just save my template responses in Perfect Keyboard (a text substitution tool) and activate each template by typing a hotkey. I have a video tutorial on how to use text substitution tools here.
5. Use an email scheduler
(Image)
Sometimes I’m quick in replying to emails, but I don’t want a ping-pong effect where I reply to an email, the person replies right away after 10 minutes (and expects a reply), and the email conversation derails into a chat — when all I want to do is get out of my inbox and work on my Q2 tasks.
An email scheduler solves this problem. It’s an email extension that became popular in recent years and lets you control when you send mail. I use Right Inbox and it works great. If I’ve typed up a message but only want it sent two days later, I do that with Right Inbox. If an email is important but I can’t reply right away and don’t want it to get buried in my inbox, I set it to return to my inbox and appear at the top a week later. If I want to be reminded when someone doesn’t reply after X days, it does that too. You can also send recurring mail with it, though I don’t use this feature.
There are tools like MailButler (for Applemail), Send Later (for Outlook), and Boomerang (for Gmail and Outlook), all with similar functions. I haven’t used the first two before. I was using Boomerang but it was quite buggy, so I switched to Right Inbox which has been great so far. All are free for up to a certain number of messages per month.
6. Reduce clutter by preventing it from entering your inbox
The best way to reduce email clutter is to prevent it from getting into your inbox. To do this,
- Unsubscribe from stuff you don’t need. For blogs that you love, keep the email subscription. For blogs that send mail excessively and you don’t really follow anymore, unsubscribe.
- Turn off unwanted notifications. Companies today send us countless notifications to divert our attention to their services. But we don’t need them. You should use a service only when you want to use it, not when it notifies you. Regain your attention and turn them off.
- Delete unwanted mail with filters. There will always be services that don’t let you unsubscribe or companies that abuse their access to your information and don’t let you opt out. Create a filter to automatically delete such mail.
- Send less email. This is an elusive yet simple rule: if you want to get less mail, send less mail. If you can call and ask the person directly, at no opportunity cost, do that. If you need to acknowledge receipt, just reply with a very short message like “Got it” or “Okay, thanks! :)” If you have nothing good to add and you’re not required to respond, don’t reply.
- No reply can be a form of reply. Because I get a lot of unsolicited mail through my blog, I’ve learned the importance of giving my attention only to the things I care about. When you reply to something like a negative message or an unsolicited pitch, even if your reply is a “no” and doesn’t require a followup, there’ll always be a portion of people who reply (a) with more noise/negativity or (b) try to push their luck and try to get more information, more time, more answers, to break into your mental space and push their agenda to you. Protect your mental space by only letting in things you care about. Block addresses that send you unwanted noise / spam.
7. Keep it short
Brevity is underrated in our attention-starved economy. As Facebook does everything it can to grab our monkey mind for another 5 minutes as part of maximizing their shareholder value and profits, we can take control of our time by being brief and precise.
In your work mail, be as precise as you can. Keep it short while covering what’s needed, then move on. When your emails are brief, (a) you help others focus on getting things done, (b) you reduce lengthy replies back to you, and (c) people can put their attention where it matters most.
Endnote
Remember that email is a tool to help you communicate and get things done, not the work itself. Which tips can you apply to be an email master? :) If you’ve found this article useful, please pass it on to a friend, family, or co-worker — you may well save hours of their time on email each week.
Get the manifesto version of this article: 10 Tips To Manage Emails Effectively [Manifesto]
This is part of the Cultivate Good Habits Series. Check out the full series:
- 21 Days To Cultivate Life Transforming Habits
- Waking Early: 9 Reasons To Wake Up Early | 21 Tips To Wake Up Early
- Quitting Soda: 5 Reasons To Quit Drinking Soda (And How To Do It)
- Improve Your Posture: Benefits of a Good Posture (And 13 Tips to Get One)
- Be TV-Free: 10 Reasons You Should Stop Watching TV
- Being On Time: How To Be On Time
- Meditation: 10 Reasons You Should Meditate | How To Meditate in 5 Simple Steps
- Manage Emails Effectively: How To Manage Your Emails Effectively
- Run Barefoot: 10 Reasons To Run Barefoot
- Emotional Eating: How To Stop Emotional Eating (6-part series)
If you like my articles, join 64,000 readers and get my latest articles delivered to your inbox. Your email is safe and I never send spam.
Useful tips, thanks!
A nice thing I found to manage my emails is a ToDo List app that enables me to transfer directly mails to it by sending the mails to a specific address. As matter of fact, many of us are using Task list tools and setting this tools up can be pretty time consuming. The things is that many of the tasks we have to do reach us by mail and so we have to read them, reply to them and them imput them into our todo list, which can be pretty heavy in your workflow when you are facing hendreds of mails..
The Todo list app I was talking about is more of an all-in-one app for productivity that includes a Todo List with the mail feature. If you’re interested its name is Beesy. There is an iPad and Web version.
I love these advices. They make me think how much more effective I could be.
But then, I am just addicted to habbits. I always give it up and fall back into my old routine – and the, when I am finally fed up with me, I just deleted all mail.
I feel much better afterward and never ever didi anything happen.
I am lloking forward to New Year. That’s usually my time to the DEL-thing
Excellent Tips! Email certainly can be a time drain if not managed properly. Unified Inbox is an excellent solution for managing Emails, and all the other communication channels like Instant Messages, Voice Mails, Snail Mails etc. from one Place.
I have gmail, yahoo mail, Hotmail and Outlook. I use them all everyday, but the most effective format for work is Outlook. Here’s why, Outlook lets you combine a lot of time saving features, but I’m only going to talk about mail for this comment.
First of all I don’t use sub-folders, they just don’t work for me. I send all common emails to folders. I color code all emails from co-workers and contacts I regularly correspond with. All messages send direct to me only have the highest priority color for me that is red. Usually in a business setting mail sent directly to only you has more importance than one sent to a group.
I set up a hierarchy of who is the most important person and read them first. That is my manager’s admin then my manager and so on and so on. I check my mail first thing in the morning and have alerts sent to me as soon as I get a new mail message and read them as they come in using the same priorities it just wrote about. After the most important folders are cleared I start with messages sent only to me then other people. Next it’s a toss up between important folders and import color coded mail.
For me the use of sub-folders is not effective. I have a long list of folders but I am consistent in how I name them so I can always find what I want. I have a co-worker who has sub-folders and gets lost looking through her files. She eventually just uses a search option which for me just takes too long.
I’m not saying my organizational method is the best, but it’s the best for me. Everyone should organize themselves in a way that makes sense to them and is the most effective for them.
I hope this slant on my organizational style is good for some of your readers.
I think being organized is very important…when you are organized you work more efficiently. I’m getting rid of a lot of papers around my desk at home and at work by filing them electronically using an online server. I can’t believe how much extra paper I have around that I really don’t need…I found a free version of cloud computing software at http://www.xambox.com. Remember:organization=productivity! Just start filing a few documents every day and in no time, you will be practically clutter free The same applies for email of course! Clean up your inbox!
Done reading. Now, if only I could truly, whole-y practice all these! Wouldn’t it be great?!?!
So far, I’ve mastered the art of everything written (ahem!) except 1, 6 and 8. Gosh, how do I ever help myself from checking emails TWICE a day. But then, OK… I live in a different time zone, I am eager to get things going after I get replies, ladida… reasons! But really, this should be good since I used to check mail all the time!
As for #6, I am close to getting it right. Then something so close to home like the current project I am working on or a friend from my hometown. Then I read… But hear this, I do make sure I limit my time. :)
I have already sought technical assistance on #8. That’s it.
Well, Celes… ANOTHER GREAT JOB! Keep it up.. Oh, please… don’t write something about “reading books online”. I’d break. LOL!
Celes,
You’re right – email management is not a vocabulary of productivity. Email is basically an inbox that captures tasks that need to be done. If you are spending major time in managing your email, then there is something wrong with that.
The tips mentioned in this post are sure ways to handle email more effectively.
-marlon
Hello Celes,
It’s been so long since I chatted with you. Hope all’s well!!!
I have got thousands of unread emails. Most of which are articles that I have subscribed to. I guess I need to do a cleanup. While I prioritize my mail, I am also accumulating so many that I know that I will never get to. Thanks for your email management tips! They are very helpful.
Let’s catch up some time when you are available!
Evelyn
Hi Evelyn, nice to have you here! Hope all’s well on your end too and would love to catch up when you’re free :D
Fake productivity sounds about right :)
I’ve found the most effective keys are:
1. Limit what makes it to your inbox … route out what doesn’t belong
2. Have a way to quickly scan and quickly move mail in a batch-like way
3. Have a separate place for grabbing the action items
The worst pattern is to do a paper shuffle and leave actionable things in your inbox. I use either pen and paper or open up notepad and grab the actions from each mail into a simple list. This lets me prioritize without shuffling my inbox and I can always have an empty inbox.
Good hints! – I thought about the “You don’t need to reply to every mail” point.
One could say it’s not polite, or not according to CRM rules. But Celes is not a company. She has only 24h a day, and she has to invest her time the best to make her living – as anyone else. And anyway, the people who are writing her should know that she at least glances at their mail. And they should not expect an answer. That is what we often forget: Our words do leave a mark, as long as the message is catched. So don’t care too much about an answer. Just write, if you have something to say. Not least for yourself.
Gee
Thanks a lot Gee, that’s very sweet of you to write that :) On that note, I do get to as many mail and messages as I can, but where the question has already been answered in the FAQs (https://personalexcellence.co/contact/) or elsewhere on the site I usually deprioritize them. A sure way to reach out would be to just post at the forums or in the blog comments.
Hi,
I am not sure about creating Folder structures. I’ve seen colleagues having folders like Customer X, Project X… And then unsure to which folder to move the received email. Even worse, when then searching, they go to many Folders and SubFolders and spend ages looking for mail.
I prefer the Google way, just archive it and then search 1 (ONE) folder. I follow the same principles in other mail clients.
Hi Robert,
I think you are missing the value of labels as “tags”.
Don’t think of labels (and even nested labels) as folder structures alone.
As an example. I freelance for my old company and I also freelance with some of their customers. When people get added to email conversation it’s automatically tagged by company (I could label by specific user name and company and department and role. eg engineer… but that’s just not necessary for my needs right now)
The point is, by utilising labels in a nested categorised way and as tags (and setting up clever email filters) you can have your email sorted and organised in a logical manner that makes searching a breeze.
Instead of searching in one big folder for “customer + date + specific topic” and having to weed though inaccurate results; I can cut that down to searching in a customer folder for a “specific topic + date” and make a mental note of which other parties were involved in the email conversation (as there will be multiple colored labels relating to that email conversation) to get to that email faster.
In fact in that instance, searching by date and topic may narrow down the searches too much, so i’d probably just search by topic and make it only 1-2 words.
1 click to get to that nested folder (in my current system for high priority folders) and 1-2 words in the search box will usually yield 2-5 results max.
I’ve previously used outlook with :
1. no folders (just inbox and sent)
2. lots of nested folders
3. in conversation mode (like gmail, but not as good)
Nothing i’ve used in the past compares to my current system for speed of searching and retrieving information.
Most of the time I don’t even need to use the search bar or scroll wheel to find what I need. Just cutting down those processes on any system shaves seconds. Now apply that to 10,000 unsorted emails. 8,000 of which aren’t really important anyway.Not fun!
All great tips, but for gmail users there is another tip that can add to nested & filtered emails.
If you go into labs and find “Hide read labels” and enable that, it will automatically hide labels with no new emails in them.
If you have large amounts of labels, you may need to scroll to see if you have new emails.. This solves this issue by only displaying labels that have new emails.
It’s also customisable. If you go to manage labels you can set up certain important labels to always display whether they have new emails in them or not.
It took a bit of fiddling around getting nested labels and hide read labels to work together; but now I have it, I spend most of my time looking at the pretty screen(that’s another issue entirely). I have nothing left to do with my emails but to answer them, ignore or delete.
I’ve tried a few other enhancements for gmail (including gmails own “priority labels”) and no other system I have :wink: used compares to this setup I have!
Once all your common emails are filtered, categorised and only new emails are displayed.. that’s it. Close gmail and get back to work or go fishing. hehe :wink:
Great tip, I’ll try that one. Thanks
Great tip, thanks a lot for sharing Mattj :D
Tried it out “hide read labels” works like a charm. Much cleaner looking page and I can immediately see which labels contain unread mail. Spot on. :)
Loved the blog post. Email can be such a time drain if not handled correctly. It used to be the phone now its a keyboard:) I’m going to start practicing a few of your tips.
Thanks Natalie, glad you find it helpful :D
Good article. I have used most of these tips before, but have lapsed recently, thanks for the reminder. :)
Thanks John :D
Commenting for this post is closed.