Your Inbox Needs Spring Cleaning. Now Is the Time.
Many are using this time in quarantine to do some spring cleaning at home. Since we don’t have anywhere to go, we might as well do some of those chores we’ve all been putting off. Personally, I’ve been cleaning out my garage, but still have a long way to go.
Many of us who are working from home are working harder and longer than ever. However, we are also working without commutes and without some of the typical distractions that take away our time in the office environment.
Digital spring cleaning
This time working in isolation is painful for many, and most of us cannot wait to get back to some semblance of normal. However, as I’ve been writing for several weeks, this time is also an opportunity. Let’s seize this moment to do some digital spring cleaning.
You could do many things to spring clean your digital work-life in this season. I’ll give you a few ideas, then focus on one:
- Perhaps you have icons scattered across your desktop. You can delete them or move important files to more logical locations.
- You may have decades of files in your home drive. Be mindful of your company’s data retention policies and keep what you must. Then delete the rest.
- While most organizations have automatic updates, it’s always a good idea to make sure your computer is fully patched, and all of your software is up-to-date with the latest versions.
- Finally, now is a great time to clean up your email inbox. That’s a tough one. I’ll spend the rest of this article describing how I do that.
Inbox zero
I love the image at the top of this article. This is displayed on the mobile version of Outlook when you completely empty your inbox to zero messages. Not zero unread messages, but zero messages! Most of you have never seen it before. I look at it as a reward for accomplishing what few can do.
Some of you think this is very difficult to attain, and simply impossible to maintain. It’s possible. I’m just as busy as you and I get just as much email as you. There are several ways to get this done, but I’ll describe my way.
Block and divert
The first way to get to inbox zero is to reduce the amount of email going to your inbox in the first place. The fewer emails that are there, the fewer you need to act upon. Here’s what I do:
- Turn the spam filter up to 11. We have a very good spam filter at CHS which keeps the vast majority of unsolicited and malicious emails from getting delivered.
- Unsubscribe from everything. Many simply delete emails they don’t want. That may be quick now, but think about your future self. Take a few minutes now to unsubscribe, so you don’t have to spend time reading and deleting similar messages in the future.
- Folder newsletters. This is my favorite tip. At CHS, we tag all incoming marketing-generated emails by adding [Newsletter] to the subject-line. That enables me to write a simple Outlook rule that automatically moves those messages out of my inbox and into a Newsletter folder. I never read these messages unless a human prompts me to do so. I can easily fish them out with a quick search.
Redirect workflow
Email is the workflow engine of last resort. If you don’t have an effective project management system, incident handling system, or exception management process, then email becomes the least common denominator causing us to handle our workflow in an ad-hoc way.
We can do our part to develop and enhance our non-email workflow processes, then act as an enforcer to make sure they are used. Assertively, but kindly, redirect all email you receive that would be better served by an established workflow process.
Read and act
The best thing you can do with the email you receive is act on it right away when you read it. Here are the possible actions you can take:
- Delete it. Despite the above actions, you will still get email that you don’t need. Feel free to be quick with the delete key.
- Save it. I get emails that are informative, but require no action of me. I don’t want to delete them because I may want to refer to them later. After reading, I quickly get them out of my inbox and move them to a folder I call “Saved.”
- Don’t file it. This is an important clarification. I do not have an elaborate filing system in my mailbox. Modern email systems are well-indexed with powerful search engines, so I can easily find email without the need for a filing system. Just dump it in the “Saved” folder. Filing takes too much time and is a waste.
- Act on it quickly. If the email takes five minutes or less to act upon, then do right in the moment. Then delete it or folder it.
- Act on it later. All of the read items in my inbox fall into this category. This is my to-do list. Anything that requires 30 minutes or more to complete, I move to my calendar and give myself time to complete it. Once it is on my calendar, I remove it from my inbox. I don’t need to think it about it anymore because I’ve already made time to handle it.
Make time for email
You aren’t going to make any headway on this if you don’t make time for it. If I left my calendar open, I would be booked in meetings nine hours per day. I proactively block time to do email. Not sure which meetings to decline to make time for email? I wrote an entire article about that. Read it here.
In this article, I’ve fully equipped you with the steps you need to take to get to inbox zero. For your sake, I hope you take advantage of this unusual time to do some digital spring cleaning. Do you have some tips of your own? Please share in the comments below.
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