The Inbox Conundrum

Written by: E Metrodora

One of the issues I hear about from my PM colleagues is the colossal amount of emails we receive. You have to read them all too (well, to an extent) and I don’t know about everywhere else but our CCG have got into the habit of including important bits of information in various bulletins so if you don’t keep your eye out you could miss something important.

I’ve had PMs telling me they are drowning in hundreds of emails – and I get it because we do receive way too many, but I’ve found that by using a simple system that I can manage everything coming into the inbox without much hassle.

If there is one thing you can do every day to make your life easier, it’s to go through your emails and decide what needs to be actioned, what can be delegated, and most importantly what can be deleted.

I use a very simple system. I approach all emails with the same few questions when I do my morning scan through the list:

1) Do I need to read and digest this information? If yes mark it as unread

2) Do I need to action this email? If yes mark it with a flag

3) Can I delegate this task? If yes, send it on and move it out of the inbox and into a file (my system goes one file for the year and an individual file for each month. Everything is organised but it keeps the clutter out of the inbox)

4) Can I deal with it now? If its something small and quick I’ll action it then and there and either file or delete as needed

5) Can I delete it? If so, delete it and forget about it

I can go through hundreds of emails using this system and then I can clearly see what I need to action, what I need to read and even better I’ve got rid of everything that threatens to waste my time at a later date.

It’s easy to become overwhelmed when you see 100 or 200 or 300 emails in the inbox, but if we can take half an hour or even (dare I say it) a full hour first thing and do nothing but go through the emails you’ll have broken the back of what’s there and you can plan your day accordingly. Sitting on an email account with thousands of old emails in the inbox is demoralising and becomes depressing over time. If you allow yourself that space during the day to go through and see what there is to be done, rather than getting bogged down in the woe-is-me of the workload you may find that it isn’t as bad as those 200 odd emails led you to believe.

Also: top tip, if you’ve been away, when you get back from your holiday and have to go through the emails, start with the most recent. If you go back to the start of your holiday, the likelihood is you’ll send out emails for work that has been completed in your absence and all it will result in is you clogging up everyone else’s inbox as well as your own. Look at the most recent and work back, you’ll see what’s been done rather than what needed to be done a week ago. There’s nothing more irritating as a member of staff than your manager sending you things to do that you’ve already completed in their absence, so start at the top and thank them for everything they’ve completed and CC’d you into. Find the original emails in that conversation and guess what? You can delete them! Or you can file them if you’re one of those people who insists on keeping everything forever…as you may have guessed I do not belong to that school of thought.

Don’t be a slave to your inbox…get stuck in and show those emails who’s boss!