We have covered a lot in regards to tackling your email.  Lets talk about some more that you can do to get that email under control.

1. Line up the main Inbox by “Subject.” This is another way to get rid of massive numbers of emails because as soon as you see the Subject line, you know whether it’s targeted to you at all, whether it’s “past business,” or any other filter you have for deciding, “Oh, for heaven’s sake. I don’t need that.”   
2. Purge to your heart’s content! In most cases, don’t open the email, you can just tell by the subject line when there are a lot that match.  
3. If you have been using folders, which I recommend (at a reasonable level), this is a good time to take a look at some of those folders.
   (Note: If you don’t know how to use folders, ask someone in your office how to establish folders, but for now, don’t worry about this one other than to make sure you prevent the situation I talk about below).  
4.  Delete some folders.  If you have folders embedded so far down that you have to click 6 or 7 times to even open them, then it’s safe to assume that they’re buried and you haven’t been accessing them. How about deleting some of those? Be bold! Look at how much you’ve already done. 
5. For some of the other folders that you may access more often, at least line up the emails that are in them by date and see if you can delete some of the older ones.

Remember, it’s not about disk space. Most of us have computers or servers that give us all the disk space we could ever use.  This is about mental space. If you open your email everyday and just look at this chaotic miasma, it uses up mental energy that you need for your other work and projects.

Be sure to check out the 7 Sane & Sensible Email Practices package.

In recent posts, we discussed:

* Setting aside “Cleaning up/clearing out” time for this project.

* The importance of  making a “Deleted Items” folder and delete anything older than 6 months and (I hope) even more than that.

* Going through your “Sent Items“ and permanently deleting anything older than 6 months (and possibly more!)

* Deleting emails older than 6 months in your Inbox.

So, now what you ask?

1. Schedule additional time (even 15 or 30 minutes a day) until you clear out all this backlog. Look at your planner right now and put the time in as if it’s an appointment (and it is!)     

2. Go back to your Inbox. This time instead of arranging your emails by the date, you are to arrange them by the “Sender”. This allows you to quickly scroll through your email Inbox and see large groupings of emails from the same company, person, or list serve. Often there are scores or even hundreds of items grouped together that you can quickly see and know they can be highlighted and deleted.For example, if you have 6 months’ worth of emails from a professional list server that you belong to, they are archived on the association’s website and you could access it whenever you wanted to.  But for now, they are just clogging up the works.  Start deleting big chunks of emails that are sent from the same group or the same person.    

Be sure to check out the 7 Sane & Sensible Email Practices package.

• Go to your main Inbox.  You may only have a few items in there, so you can ignore this, but others reading this have hundreds or thousands of items in the main Inbox (not sorted into folders, just sitting there). This situation is overwhelming, inefficient, and chaotic in the same way that having hundreds or thousands of pieces of paper and other items on your desk is overwhelming, inefficient, and chaotic. So recognize that fact.
  
• Next, line up your main Inbox by date, just as you should the Deleted Items and the Sent Items (see previous post).
  
• If the email is more than 6 months old, delete it completely (highlight and hold down the Shift key).
  
• Depending on your situation, you may be amazed at the hundreds or thousands of emails you have just deleted. And guess what, the world is still spinning on its axis!
  
• Recognize that this is just the beginning of getting your email chaos at bay–and be proud of yourself for starting!

Be sure to check out the 7 Sane & Sensible Email Practices package for additional tips and techniques to keep email chaos at bay.

• Understand that “cleaning up/clearing out” time needs to be set aside, in the same way that you set aside time to “clean up/clear out” your office.
  
• Look in your calendar now and set aside some time–later today, then again tomorrow, and then again the next day, at least.
  
• I want you to do one thing RIGHT NOW, though. Print out this email so that you can more easily follow the instructions I’m giving you…. Now you will be ready for your next session, where you will do the following:
  
• Start with the “Deleted Items” folder. Click on it and see how many are in there. Usually the number shows somewhere on the screen. Take note of it. Then, click at the top of the column so that the emails are arranged by “date” or “received”. If you have 1000s of items in Deleted, then AT LEAST start by deleting anything that is more than 6 months old. Here’s how to do that easily: Just start with the date that is 6 months prior to when you are reading this and click on the first one, hold down your Shift key, hit Page Down, and you will start highlighting screen-fulls of old email. Every few screen-fulls, hit Delete and you will permanently delete these.
  
• After you are down to only 6 months’ worth in your Deleted Items, then go to Sent Items, and line them up the same way, i.e., by date. Start with 6 months ago, highlight them, and when you hit the Delete key, hold down the Shift key so that they are permanently deleted. Otherwise, you are just moving them from Sent Items to Deleted Items.

Be sure to check out the 7 Sane & Sensible Email Practices package for more ideas to keep your email under control.

• Stop email ping-pong (also known as “boomerang email”).
  
• Have a “throwaway” email address (from hotmail or yahoo, for example). You can use it when you have to sign in to various websites, etc., but you never give it out to anyone who is sending you real mail. Then, if it starts being bombarded with junk, you can just turn it off and create a new “throwaway” email address.
  
• Keep updated virus software. Having your computer shut down due to a virus causes untold chaos and headache for you and those around you.
  
• Ask people not to send you unnecessary “stuff”-cartoons, jokes, chain letters, etc. Be kind but firm in your request.
  
• Clear out your email inbox daily. (WHEW! I know this one makes most people fall out of their chairs when I say this in a workshop. We will come back to this one later in the series, but for now, I just wanted to put it out there for you).

Be sure to check out the 7 Sane & Sensible Email Practices package.

1. Open your email a specified number of times each day (vs. having it on constantly). Even if you open it once an hour, that’s an improvement over having it on 100% of the time.
   
2. Only open if you have time to process/deal with the email that is there.
   
3. Set up and use all the “rules” you possibly can to sift & sort your email. If you don’t know how to do this with your program (Outlook, Eudora, or some other), then ask someone who does. Each little tip you can use makes a difference.
   
4. Use a clear, pertinent, succinct subject line (and this may be the whole message). For example: “Meeting Tuesday afternoon is canceled.” If this is indeed the entire message, then put EOM which means End of Message to let the reader know they don’t even have to open the email.
   
5. Use and teach others to use NNTR (No Need to Respond) or NRN (No Response Necessary).

Be sure to check out the 7 Sane & Sensible Email Practices package.

I am not sure what your email backlog is, but here are two possibilities:

• Unread emails which show up as “bold” to indicate they are all unread.
• Emails that are all “read” but you haven’t processed them.

This post is to give you specific ideas for dealing with the more current backlog of emails in your inbox. For some of you, the backlog is a month or less. Whatever it is, consider implemeting the following:

1.  Set aside a specific amount of time each day to deal with processing–and with gradually eliminating the “backlog.” If you have a timer on your computer, your watch, or your PDA (Palm or some other type), set the timer for 30 minutes and devote those thirty minutes to dealing with your email and eliminating the backlog.  If your timer goes off and you are making good progress and feel like continuing, then do so.

2.  Think about your email backlog the same way you consider dealing with a paper backlog….start with the most recent first and work backward. Just like you probably have boxes of papers, or file folders full of papers that you could start sorting and processing, you are better off using your time to deal well with the newer paper that is coming into your office. Same with your email. Start with the most recent and work backwards.

3.  During your processing time, click on your email and sort your messages so that they are in date order, and deal with the most recent one first. And deal with it. Here’s what “deal with it” means:

1. Delete it. Delete it if it is trash, has nothing to do with you, is a waste of time, or is a duplicate of information you already have or could get elsewhere.
2. Delegate it. Forward it if someone else needs the information, task, or responsibility (and you don’t).
3. Handle it (right now). If you can handle this email in two minutes or less, then answer it, do it, make the phone call, put the information in your planner….whatever the action that is required.
4. File it for action. File it for later action if you cannot do the task now because you don’t have the time or don’t have the information. You can file it in several ways. You can print out the email and put it in your “tickler/1-31 file” or you can put the email into an email “folder” you create that indicates that the items in it need action. I have an email folder labeled “ASAR” which means, As Soon As Reasonable. I don’t put anything in that email folder unless it requires my action. I also change the subject line of the emails I put in there so that it say what the action is.
5. File it for reference. If the email is something that you will need later on for one reason or another, and the information is not going to be available anywhere else, then file it. For example, if you get an email that confirms receipt of a form you turned in, and you want to have that as “proof” just in case, then either print out the email and file it in a physical form, or file it in digital format (within your email program or somewhere else on your computer). I have an email folder called “Orders Expected” and that’s where email confirmations of orders I’ve placed would go.

Please sit at your computer and start on the most recent emails you have and make progress through them in this way. You will get more and more efficient on your processing until you get to a point of burning through 60 – 80 emails in an hour….or maybe even faster if fewer of them require action.

If these ideas are helpful, put them into practice today! Set aside email processing time everyday and set as a goal to process a little more email everyday than you receive–and before you know it, you will have eliminated the backlog.

For MANY more Sane & Sensible Email Practices. check out this resource.