Email System

Email system benefits

The benefits of creating a system include:

• Stop feeling overwhelmed by the volume of your inbox

  • By clearing out the clutter in your inbox, you won’t have to face the glaring number of how many unread messages you have every time you enter your inbox. This alone can reduce some stress associated with reading emails.

• Save time trying to find relevant messages

  • By organizing important messages in designated locations, you can avoid wasting time trying to find relevant information in your inbox or locating those emails with feedback you want to reference.

• Keep you focused on actionable items

  • If you create a dedicated place outside of your inbox for managing tasks, you can use email for its intended purpose of communication and avoid wasting time trying to sort through the noise of your inbox. Additionally, by turning off push notifications for email, you can avoid being sucked into the email black hole when you should be focusing on your project work instead. 

• Reduce distraction and time wasted re-reading messages

  • If you keep your inbox clean and actionable, you can stay focused on doing the work needed instead of re-reading a message from your boss for the 5th time today. Additionally, by setting standard practices of time blocking emails and only touching each message once, you can significantly reduce the overall time you spend reading and responding to messages each day.

Email management tools

If you have budget through your company or are interested in investing in a paid tool to help you solve these issues, there are specialized email management tools you could consider using, such as:

• Superhuman: This tool has developed an ardent following of fans. You are set up with a 1:1 onboarding call when you first sign up, and the core use of the program is founded on deep use of keyboard shortcuts to quickly action and manage your messages. There are also dozens of features meant to remove repetitive email tasks such as auto-replies, blind intros, and smart categorization.

• Hey: Hey is an email tool that comes from the team who built Basecamp and it has a similar look and focus on productivity. It is focused on streamlining internal communications around emails with features like threading, internal comments, and easy aliases. They also offer a free blog for personal users and an email address with a @hey.com domain.

• Mixmax: Mixmax is geared towards customer-facing teams in businesses, but it helps manage both the flow of incoming and outgoing messages. It also has several time-saving features built in such as template messages, email scheduling, and interactive elements you can add right to your email copy. 

Create your own email system:

Unless you have the company budget to do so or you have a high volume of emails incoming every day, you can easily create a system in your email provider for free. Here is how to develop your own email system:

• Set up archive folders for key categories

  • First, set up archive folders for any emails that would be helpful to reference in bulk. 

    • In Gmail, you can do this by selecting the “Move to” icon and then selecting “Create new” or “Manage labels”

    • For example, you may want to organize positive and negative customer feedback so you can easily read back through messages if you need to pull a customer quote or get inspiration.

  • Most email tools have pretty robust search options that should help you find individual messages. This will allow you to rely on the generic “Archive” option for most messages, and you should only create unique folders for those that would be helpful to review in bulk.

• Review and move all recent emails

  • You’re going to start by going through each message in your inbox that you received in the past 2 weeks. For each of these items, read the message once and take the following action:

    • If there is nothing you need to do about the email but you want to be able to reference it in the future, move it to appropriate archive folder or use the generic archive option

    • If there is nothing you need to do about the email and you don’t need the information within, delete the message.

    • If you need to act on the email or respond to the message and it will take less than 5 minutes, do it NOW and then archive the message. 

    • If you need to act on the email or respond to it and it will take more than 5 minutes to do so, create a task or reminder in the system you use for your to-do list or task management. Once you have a task, link to the relevant email and then archive it.

    • If you need to act on the email, but want to do it at a specific date in the future, snooze the email until that date. In gmail, you can do this by clicking on the “Snooze” button and selecting the time to snooze until.

• Move anything older than 2 weeks into "Older" archive folder

  • Add one final archive folder called “Old messages” or something similar. You are going to put everything older than 2 weeks into this folder. If you haven’t responded in 2 weeks, it is likely not important or urgent to do so, and if someone still needs a reply, they will follow up with you again.

  • Once you’ve created the folder and reviewed all recent items, bulk select the remaining emails in your inbox. You can do this in Gmail, by selecting the checkbox above the first message and selecting “ All”.

  • Once you have all messages selected, mark them all read and then move them all to your “Old messages” archive folder. 

• Set 2-3 times to review email per day

  • Once you have cleared out your existing inbox clutter, the next step is to set up a regular system so you can stay on top of your emails to avoid building clutter again. If you mindlessly check email throughout the day, you are likely wasting dozens of minutes doing so, if not more. This is valuable time you could spend working, relaxing, or dedicating to other more important areas of your life. Get this time back by timeboxing your email. This means that you schedule 2-3 times a day where you check email, and otherwise you avoid your email inbox. To set this up:

    • Schedule your “Email review” times on your calendar so you have the dedicated time to do so.

    • Turn off any push notifications and badges you have set up on email for your phone and computer. This will help you avoid the temptation to hop into email outside of your designated times. This step alone can also significantly reduce the stress you feel, the distractions you have to fight, and the time you waste in email.

    • As you enter your scheduled email times, review each new item in your inbox and only touch each message once. This means that for every message in your inbox, you take one of the following actions the first time you read the message. Don’t let yourself procrastinate because each time you read the message is time wasted that you could be doing something else. The first time you read each message, take one of the following actions:

      • Archive

      • Snooze

      • Action and archive (it it takes less than 5 minutes)

      • Create task (if it will take more than 5 minutes)

      • Delete

    • Set up a signature and include any information you want to use in every message such as your title and contact information. Additionally, you could include a note about your email response times if you want to set expectations for those you communicate with. In Gmail, you can configure your signature options in “General” Settings and can set more than one signature option if you have varying messages you’d like to include depending on the recipient. 

• Unsubscribe ruthlessly

  • The last key to your email system is to unsubscribe ruthlessly to any types of messages you don’t want to receive again in the future. With the abundance of email marketing campaigns out there, you have likely subscribed for lists you never wanted. And you likely let these messages clutter your inbox and waste your time because it feels like too much work to unsubscribe. But the time you spend unsubscribing will pay itself off quickly in the reduction of emails you get into your inbox. So, for every message you see that you don’t want to see again, go ahead and unsubscribe from the list. The “unsubscribe” option is required to be in all marketing emails, and you can usually find it at the very bottom of the email message.