4 Ways To Finally Get Your Inbox Under Control
If you are anything like me, you get hundreds of emails a day. On weekdays I average 350 emails in my business email account alone. Despite this, I am able to get my inbox back to zero every day.
With a little guidance, you can too!
How To Catch Up On Emails
If you are reading this, your email inbox is currently out of control. Block off an hour to get it under control.
First, archive any email older than 30 days. If you can’t (or don’t know how to) archive, just move those old emails out of your inbox into a separate folder. If you did not receive a follow-up email or phone call in 30 days, it either wasn't important or it’s too late to respond.
For the remaining 30 days of email: respond, delete (and/or unsubscribe), or add to your to-do list. For emails that you have to come back to, put them in a separate to-do folder so they are not clogging your inbox. Or use an app like Boomerang to bring it back to your inbox at a later date when you are ready to deal with it.
I also find it helpful to let the sender know that you received the email and will respond by X date, so they don’t keep emailing you about it. Some lawyers even have an autoresponder that automatically delivers this message so people know when to expect a response. Example:
"Your email has safely landed in my inbox. You can expect a response within 24-48 hours. If this is in regards to an urgent matter please contact the office at 555-555-5555."
Now that you have your inbox emptied, here is how to keep it that way…..
How To Stay On Top of Email
Don’t Make Email Your Default
Email should not be your default method of communication, especially to clients. Most case management software has a portal to securely communicate with clients. This helps keep your email inbox clear and you can easily manage or delegate client communication.
If you only communicate via email, people will catch on and communicate with you solely through email; adding to your backlog.
Check In A Few Times A Day
Another key change that stopped email from taking over my life was to only check emails at certain intervals during the day. I try to check emails in the morning, around lunch, and the end of my workday. This cut down on the many interruptions I had by constantly checking email throughout the day.
Each time I check email I either I respond, archive, or delete so the smaller chunks are easier to manage.
Another good tip is to turn off your email notifications so you won't see that you have new email unless you sign in.
Get Rid Of The Email You Don’t Want
The majority of your email is probably promotions/junk/things you don’t care about. You can decrease the amount of email by getting rid of these types of emails. I use two strategies for this.
Unroll.me is a service that “rolls” certain email into one daily digests. So for all those sales emails that you don’t want to unsubscribe from but also don’t want in your inbox, you can add them to unroll.me and you will get one email each day with all of these emails in it.
The second strategy is to simply unsubscribe from things you don’t care about. You can use unroll.me to unsubscribe or unsubscribe as they pop up in your inbox.
Respond, Delegate, Add To List, Archive, Delete
The key to staying at Inbox Zero is to take action on every email. Either respond, delegate, add it to my to-do list, archive, or delete.
If I can respond in less than two minutes, I’ll respond. If I need more time or information, I’ll add the task to my to-do list and either move the email to my to-do folder or use Boomerang to bring it back to my inbox when I’m ready to respond. If it's something my virtual paralegal can handle more efficiently, I'll delegate to her.
If it doesn't require a response, I’ll simply archive or delete it.
I forward my domain email to Gmail because I love the interface and it’s easy to manage my inbox. I know if I archive an email, all I have to do is search and I can find it later.
I also forward all case-related emails to my case management software so all case information is in one place. If a client emails me I will respond via my client portal to discourage emails.
Email can be stressful, but if you stay on top of it you can keep it from taking over your life.
What do you do to keep your email under control?
