Feel like a slave to email? 5 steps to help deal with a messy inbox and reduce stress

I found I was living in my inbox. Whenever an email came in, I would drop whatever else I was doing and read the message. It’s difficult to ignore that little notification that pops up, isn’t it?

But I was also frustrated by my concentration being broken. Every time I got distracted by an email, I had to rethink my way back into a task. Just as I had regained my focus, another email. Ping!

As someone who works part-time, I also feel like I sometimes have just as many meetings and emails as if I were full-time. I therefore need to maximise my productivity in those in-between moments by having periods of pure concentration, especially when I’m doing something focused like editing video. Otherwise, the cat’s cradle of connections in my brain unravels and I’m left with a pile of tangled woolly thoughts instead.

I tried different ways of prioritising but the answer that worked for me was turning off my notifications and taking a leaf from the ‘Inbox Zero’ approach. It’s a method that was made popular by Merlin Mann at a Google TechTalk in 2007 so it’s not a new idea but it’s a very simple concept that anyone can use.

Inbox Zero is about having a tidy inbox, a tidy brain, and then giving yourself permission to ignore your inbox for a while until it suits you. This last bit being crucial. The ‘zero’ refers to having zero emails just sitting in your inbox. Through a little bit of discipline, you train yourself to first categorise your emails before fully reading them all. I’ve adapted this a little to suit me.

Like most people, every morning the first thing I do when I log on is open my Outlook, but I limit myself by spending about 20 minutes organising my emails first. I don’t work my way through each one and reply from top to bottom. Instead, I scan my emails and then follow these 5 steps:

• If it’s something I can deal with in less than 2 minutes, I just reply to it then and there or delegate/forward immediately.
• If it will take more than 2 minutes to deal with but isn’t urgent, I click on the red flag and I schedule a time in my diary to look at these later in the day.
• If I am waiting for a response or further information before I can complete a task, I file these emails in a folder called ‘Follow Up’ and then once a week I go through this folder and chase up anything that hasn’t progressed.
• I use the delete and archive buttons a lot. Archive if I might need to refer back to it at some point (the search function is then my friend) and delete if I definitely won’t need it. Just be aware that if you archive an email with attachments, it won’t save the attachments.
• Then I start dealing with the ones that are left: my priority emails that need a bit of urgent attention but might take me a bit of time.

My inbox is now clean and organised and, I must admit, I feel a little bit smug at this point. If I really need to concentrate, I then turn off my Outlook and don’t open it again until after lunch when I do my red flags and organise my emails again for another 20 minutes.

If you’re someone who gets a lot more email traffic than me, maybe if you’re managing a joint inbox, then you might want to spend a little time initially setting up some categories or rules if you haven’t already. But for me this simple approach helps reduce stress, respond to all my emails efficiently, and ensure I have time to do my work without distractions from emails.

If you give this approach a go, connect with me on LinkedIn (Vicky Burns) and let me know how you found it, or share your own thoughts and tips. I’d love to hear what works for you.