Is it possible to make email manageable? Or at least slightly more so?

November 1, 2024 3:47 PM

I'm determined to make sending and receiving emails a less overwhelming part of my job. What techniques do you use to improve how you handle incoming messages, both technologically (through settings and sorting features in an email app) and also behaviorially (in how frequently you check and deal with messages and how you prevent things from building up)?

I need to get writing and teaching done, so I can't set up a habit of constantly receiving and instantly dealing with messages. That would melt my beleaguered brain. Right now, messages are building up incredibly quickly, and it is stressful, because important messages are nestled in between lots of newsletters and other mass emails (not spam, but not urgent).

I liked how Spark sorted these out automatically for me, but my employer is now forcing everyone to use outlook. What do you do to keep your inbox relatively under control? What resources out there do you trust for advice in managing this?

posted by umbú to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

I just switched back to Outlook (from Mac) so here are some technical things you can do:

1. Make rules in Outlook to sort out the newsletters etc. and shunt them to a folder.

2. Use conditional formatting with categories to make emails show up in different colors based on your criteria. I have all unread emails come in as red, and by right clicking and changing the category of the email, that will change the color. I have categories/colors for "waiting for", "Todo", etc. [YMMV on that - I use my inbox as kind of a todo list.] When I worked for somebody else, I had it set where emails from my boss came in colored red.

3. Turn off new email notifications.

4. Sorting by sender can be useful sometimes. Just click on the "From" column in the header.

5. "Quick Steps" are great if you do certain things repeatedly, like send an email to a certain handful of people. They're like macros essentially.

6. "Quick Parts" is canned language you can store in outlook and insert into your email quickly.

7. Customize your toolbar so you don't hunt for the commands you use frequently.

8. For behaviors, set aside certain times for dealing with email. Then stick to it! You can even close outlook completely when it's not that time of day if you want.

9. Try to use the "touch it once" philosophy. Deal with the email as soon as you open it; don't say "ugh" and close it.

10. Edited to add: Learn a couple of keystrokes. I use a lot of folders to store emails by client. "Control-Shift V" is the keystroke for "move to folder", which is incredibly helpful.

David Allen's "Getting Things Done" book has lots of tips on behaviors.
posted by bluesky78987 at 4:06 PM on November 1 [10 favorites]

Oh yeah definitely use outlook's rules to filter out the newsletters! Outlook can be a bit of a beast but it's been the work standard for a while so you can usually find how to do things pretty easily with a bit of poking online.

Set aside a few chunks of time for email. For me, I'd do a skim in the morning to see if there was anything that would impact my day (for me, room changes, extra duties) and then later on, around lunch when I didn't have the brain for other stuff, I'd go through and sort stuff, reply to stuff, etc.
posted by freethefeet at 4:23 PM on November 1

Love this AskMe.

Hard seconding:
Turn off email notifications. Nothing ruins one’s flow than the impossible-to-decline invitation to grab a quick bump of dopamine by seeing what just came in. Disabling Outlook notifications was one of the best things i’ve ever done to help myself deal with the slow-gruesome-death-by-interruption that is the modern so-called workplace.
posted by jerome powell buys his sweatbands in bulk only at 4:44 PM on November 1 [3 favorites]

I previously collected my thoughts on this, for just such an occasion. It describes my process for dealing with the absolute deluge of email as a senior developer in a FAANG.
posted by jimfl at 5:15 PM on November 1 [6 favorites]

I turn off notifications and set my email client to only check for new mail every 30 minutes.

With each email, I make quick decisions:
- can I delete this? DELETE IT NOW
- is this something I can unsubscribe from and prevent future emails? UNSUBSCRIBE NOW
- can I reply within a minute or two? REPLY NOW
- is there a to-do in here? make an item in my to-do list, then archive (the to-do might be just "read this annoyingly long message from so and so")

And then I archive.

If things still build up, maybe have a weekly or monthly review where you do a quick skim over the oldest emails, admit to yourself you aren't going to do shit about them now, and then archive them. Reset your inbox and keep going.

Think about how quickly people in your work world expect answers to email. Immediately? Some time today? Some time this week? The "average" answer to that might inform how often you check your email. I personally prefer a quick sweep/review when I get to work, just to check what might be on fire and absolutely need dealing with today, and then try not to check again until midmorning, after lunch, before stopping work. Maybe someone you work with has unreasonable expectations, and that requirse a conversation with them so they can dial it back - there are some folks who think they deserve an instant reply 24/7 and they need to be told what they can realistically expect from you.

I use filters and folders a lot to organise mail, especially from mailing lists and automated notifications. The more you can get routine messages automatically moved to a folder, the less clutter there will be in your inbox view and the less work you will have processing new mail.

With newsletters of the Substack sort, worth checking whether there is an RSS feed and you can use a feedreader/newsreader, and get that shit out of your email altogether.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 6:00 PM on November 1 [2 favorites]

On review: jimfl's approach is excellent and a more thoroughly worked out approach than mine.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 6:02 PM on November 1

I'd like to nth recommend turning off notifications.

What I really struggle with and was thinking about posting later today is that my struggle is due to volume and the fact that 95% of my work generates out of 100-150 emails daily. I've tried categories, tasks, subdividing into folders to identify the actual work, but I have ADHD and struggle extensively with remembering to check those locations. I get buried in the inbox.

Not sure it's allowed, but I'd love suggestions on that!
posted by ChumbawambaTimesFour at 3:30 AM on November 2

Turn off notifications also in teams and any other blasted tool, seriously. Schedule time in your agenda to deal with things like email and refuse to check outside these blocks.

I have emails addressed to me and emails in a shared mailbox that are allocated to me. I go into the shared mailbox a couple of times a day. If anything is more urgent the mailbox owner better tell me.

Absolutely filter newsletters, system notifications etc into subfolders. Most system messages I get are notifications to go into other tools to approve things. I never check the subfolders for those and just go in the other tools to approve during my approval blocks in my agenda.

If you get copied in lots of emails but don’t need to take any action view your messages as threads. During your email time slot, start with the last message in the exchange and file or archive the thread with one click.
posted by koahiatamadl at 5:37 AM on November 2

One of my colleagues filters all emails he is copied into but not the addressee into a separate inbox folder. He still checks these but less frequently.
posted by koahiatamadl at 5:41 AM on November 2

At my Fortune 50 company we have a home grown curriculum to teach people how to be productive with email. Some of the items have been covered like "turn off notifications" and "schedule two blocks of time a day to triage inbox". There is also some less obvious things like making it clear to people that you aren't immediately reachable via email. It will be painful but eventually people will get the idea.

Then for actual processing of email. Each message gets one of 4 D's: Do, Defer, Delete, Delegate.

Do - If you can respond completely in 1-2 minutes, go ahead and do that now.
Defer - If a response will take more than 2 minutes then it needs to be done later. If this is a time sensitive task, block off an appropriate amount of time on your calendar to handle it. Otherwise, put this item on your personal backlog.
Delete - pretty self-explanatory.
Delegate - if this can be answered by someone else, send it to them.

In addition to the daily calendar processing times, you are instructed to block off a chunk of time on Monday morning to look at your week ahead + your personal backlog. You are to take the backlog tasks and use them to fill in the empty spots on your calendar.

In essence, instead of being shackled to your inbox, you are enthralled to your calendar. I can't work this way but there are people that swear by it.
posted by mmascolino at 6:53 AM on November 2 [1 favorite]

Small quick technical thing: set up Outlook to use the focused/other inbox. When you get an email that's a newsletter or something else unimportant, right click on the message and choose Move to.... and from the list choose Always move to Other. Future emails from that address will then automatically go to the Other inbox. For me, having the inbox split in two is a good level of sorting without a lot of work.

You mention teaching and writing, so you may be an academic. That means that a lot of your work is done by you, and you need to protect that time.

If this applies to you, then consider an unconventional strategy: don't reply to email quickly. This is because the faster you reply, the more work you make for yourself with new things to do from the responses to your replies. Only read through your email once per day. Let people know you usually will reply within 48 hours.

In addition to the technical suggestions (filters etc), this change in the way you think about email might be useful.
posted by medusa at 9:38 AM on November 2 [2 favorites]

I used to use all of bluesky's suggestion when I worked in a busy office. I actually preferred sort of an inverse inbox zero, where everything left in my inbox was something I had to answer. In the morning I did a skim and moved anything that was just FYIs or whatever into their folders, and then I started from the bottom of my inbox - the oldest emails that still needed an answer. And then moved them as soon as I was done.
posted by nakedmolerats at 1:36 PM on November 2