Hello organizers! This week we are discussing digital organization and the importance of maintaining a systematic email inbox. I don’t know about y’all but I swear I get a hundred emails a day. It can be really hard to keep track of important messages when my inbox is full of ads, spam mail, facebook updates and work related conversations.
Once I learned how to organize my inbox, I found myself spending much less time searching through the gmail app for various emails.
Unsubscribe from Ad Emails
Typically, when you scroll down to the bottom of an ad email, there is a hyperlink labeled “unsubscribe” that will take you to a screen where you can decide about how much communication you'd like to receive from the sender. You can either unsubscribe altogether or limit incoming emails to e.g. one per week. The process takes less than a minute and is so worth it. When I find that my inbox is overflowing with advertisements, I dedicate 15 minutes to unsubscribing from unnecessary mail.
Create Sub-folders
Open your inbox
(In Gmail) Hover your mouse over the left hand side menu
Scroll down to the bottom of the menu and click “create new label” (aka create new folder)
Create folders for all of the different categories within your email life. I have the following groups: Work, School, Internship, Family, Friends. I create sub-folders within each group when needed!
Create filters that automatically move unread emails into their proper folder; this way you know where everything is when you need it.
Schedule it
Everyone’s email load is different. While some people have to check their email throughout the day for their job, I would recommend trying to block off some time each day dedicated to email processing. My best friend always laughs at me because I have a tendency to check my email every two minutes. This is a bad habit I am working on breaking! Scheduling in email time everyday allows you to take control of your messages. Even if you can’t read through all of the messages, if you create folders and categorize them consistently, you can save a lot of time in the long run.
Happy Organizing!
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