Tip 6 Organizing Your In Boxes And Emails

Sometimes you need a clean sweep of your emails and inboxes. (I admit I just wrote a new introduction to fit the best clipart illustration I could find, a broom! Unfortunately it has to be jpg for this site. When I solve this problem I'll load up the picture. Meanwhile, just think of a broom sweeping out your email box.)

The problem is that I have about 400 emails in both of my inboxes. Unfortunately today's vital information about the meeting time has disappeared.

You want to re-read the last email and sound positive before getting a phone call from your boss, dinner date or ex-husband.

Maybe your ever-efficient boss or ex is lost overseas. He knows where he is - but you don't - until you find his email. Was he in Shanghai or Taiwan?

My most efficient man told me I should never have more in my inbox than would fit on the screen.

If only I followed his example, I would be jetting around the world in first class hotels, running a business in half a dozen countries, instead of frittering my time away writing jolly blogs for you, dear.

Now you know why my husband and I don't live together for more than six and a half minutes. I'm forever trying to keep up with his example but he's already gone.

For example, my typical crisis: 'Help - where is today's vital email - are we meeting at 7.30 or 8 - where's his email?'

Do you ever have a last minute panic?

I do. I shouldn't. If I can organize a pupil doing A level English, make them a year plan for homework and revision, tell them to keep their homework file on the far right of the top bookshelf, I should be able to organize my own life.

And what is more important than the emails with the phone number of the person you are meeting today, and the venue?

Yes, the information should be copied into your diary. But you've had three phone calls and emails since the email confirmation. Where is it? Here's how I try to organize my email inboxes.

Dating Sites
If anybody is about to see me for lunch, dinner, the weekend, whatever, their latest email saying 'see you at six in Serenade Restaurant' stays in my inbox.

If my correspondent has gone quiet, or jetted off to Australia for 3 months, they are archived in a folder.

To prevent the emails being lost and forgotten I might add a reminder by re-labelling the folder, for example, NicktheNerdopeninOctober. If the system tells me that's too long a name for a folder, I shorter it to NicNerdOct.

Dating sites have their own problems and solutions. General emails have different systems.

General Emails
I find that anything taken out of the email inbox is likely to be forgotten.

Some important events get their own file. For example, Granny's80thparty.

I want my system to be clear to anybody else, so that if I fell and sprained my ankle and wrist and ended up in hospital or bed unable to reach the computer, I could tell a member of the family or visiting well-wisher where to find an email contact to cancel a meeting.

Similarly, your work email should be clear enough for somebody to take over. In case you are hospitalized, stranded overseas, or need to get a phone number.

You might change jobs but stay on good terms and want to be able to go back if the salary is increased, so you should leave things clear for whoever takes over your job.

In my g mail account the archived folders are alphabetical. Sometimes you have to decide whether to list under Jon Smith or Smith Company. If you want to file a daily bulletin, to save trawling to the end of the list, file under Jon Smith because J is earlier.

If the emails are rarer, keep them under Smith company. I sometimes end up with both labels. This doubles the number of files. You might consolidate and reduce it to one.

Or keep both going so that when Jon sends you Jon Smith emails you can find the folder fast. But when he sends you emails from Smith company you can find that, too.

When my son worked in recruitment the business was very much based on Time Is Money. Hundreds of calls aday, including cold calls and outgoing calls, hundreds of incoming query emails from prospective company clients and CVs from hopefuls.

The boss said they had no time to classify everything in the inbox. They simply let it grow indefinitely in date order and made new folders for vital information.

One way of classifying vital information is to forward items of interest to yourself, perhaps in another email account.

Do you have any other systems?