TIP: To-Do Email Folder
April 17, 2007 · Print This Article
I gave up trying to keep a clean email inbox years ago. Everything I had read said that I should sort anything I needed into folders and keep my inbox clean, but I finally just gave up.
I finally decided that keeping anything that might be slightly important in my inbox where I can search for it. It turns out that for me this is far more productive than trying to move things around and categorize them, it was very liberating and I found that nothing bad happened by keeping older emails in my inbox. In fact, I discovered it was easier to find things because it only required a simple search instead of trying to find the folder where I had filed something.
However, there is a downside. It can be very easy to forget about something you
need to act on later. Since I do consulting, forgetting to act on a
small email request from a client could lose me several hundred dollars
on that particular request and several thousand dollars on future
business.
To deal with this, I’ve found that creating an email to-do folder for
each of my clients helps me stay organized without trying to sort
through thousands of messages that I need to keep just as a reference.
The to-do folder gives me a simple place to check to see if there is
anything pending and allows me to focus on a particular work context as needed. Once I’ve completed the task, I move it back out
into my general inbox, where I can find it easily if I need to reference it later.
I like to have a empty inbox, so once an email is read it goes straight to a archive folder. I only have one archive folder for all my mail - I agree that with desktop search tools now available trying to keep an ever growing hierarchical folder system is a waste of time. I use outlook 2003, it allows me to flag emails if any follow up is needed. I then use search folders set up for each of my clients to show me any flagged emails form each client. Each search folder is very quick to set up and saves the bother of moving emails back and forth between folders.
Hi Mark,
You’re right that the heirarchical folder mess that most of us have been using since we only got a few dozen emails a day just doesn’t scale. But you are still archiving your emails to folders by having to remember to put them in a ToDo folder.
I’m lucky enough to use a Mac for all my desktop computing needs nowadays, and as such use the excellent MailTags plugin for Apple Mail, like this.
I used to be a folder junkie, putting every old email into the appropriate folders and having lots of those.
Ever since gmail introduced me to labels, I’ve found it alot easier to tag and “put away” the email with all others in one place (called Archive).
For emails I have to act on, starring or flagging it would do the trick. I can bring starred emails even if they’re archived away.
Gmail is perfect for this. You just tag the mails with the client name. You can flag action items with a star, then unstar them when you are done dealing with it. I find it much easier than moving things to folders.
@Rob - The search folders sounds like an excellent idea. I’ve started using search folders to keep track of incoming bills and it seems to be working well.
Keeping a single archive folder sounds like a good idea. I may have to try that. When I was on an exchange server, I had a .pst file that I would move everything older than 6 months into. My laptop was synched with the most recent 6 months and if I needed anything else I could get it off the terminal server.
@Gaz - I put things I need to do in the to-do folder. Once they are completed I move them back into my main email list–it is kind of like tagging emails. I use Apple Mail as well, so I’ll have to check into the MailTags plugin.
@AL - I really like GMails, label concept. It would really do exactly what I need. Unfortunately I haven’t made the switch to using non-client based email all the time. I still like having it actually running on my computer. Part of this is because I frequently use very slow or high latency connections where using the web is painfully slow.
I’m going to look into the MailTags plugin that Gaz mentioned to see if it might work for me. It would be really nice if it would sync with Gmail labels.
@Ron - I’ve been impressed with Gmail, but I’m not quite ready to give up IMAP and go back to POP. But I agree, the label and tags idea is probably the best solution.
Hi Mark, good post - I’m with you 100% on keeping as much as possible in your inbox for quick searches. I’ve found flagging to-do messages to be priceless, having ’smart searches’ set up to quickly find those flags works great.
On a side-note, I keep all Excels, Docs, and PPTs in a big folder as well. Once you come up with your personal file-naming structure, you can find your files amazingly fast, and not have to worry about where you ‘dropped’ it.
Not a lot of people using Outlook realize you can drag and drop e-mails from the Inbox to the Tasks icon on the left. This automatically creates a new task using the subject line of the e-mail as the task name and the body of the e-mail as the task body. Then you can quickly assign it a date with a reminder and save it. The original email stays in the Inbox. I use this all day long and I couldn’t get things done without it.
@Michael - Great tip! Thanks for sharing it. I haven’t used Outlook for several years, so I didn’t know about that. There is supposed to be something similar in Apple Mail in 10.5, but I haven’t looked very closely at it.
One tip I could offer, I flag my emails in Outlook and put a little note as to what needs to be done. Then you can choose your fields on your inbox so it shows the text of your flag. This has helped me tremendously, so I have a one word reminder as to what needs to be done w/ a particular email.