Thanks for the visit – great to see you here!

Back when I was working for an investment bank I used to get more than 500 emails a day. The *only* way to manage this was with rules. In fact, some people maxed out Outlook’s rules (on my first day I was warned “this is one of the biggest problems in this job”).

Currently I use some rules already (with Gmail it’s really easy), but could always improve. One method I’ve been doing for a while, though I’ve stopped because it has become impractical is to use my inbox as a reminder… but if you have too many of those, it becomes clutter and you become blind to that. So that’s no longer practical.

The solution that was interestingly exactly what you suggest: categories. This somehow “evolved” for me (as I didn’t plan it) – I now have three categories “Today/tomorrow” “Urgent” and “When I have time” and divide all my tasks accordingly – this really helped me organize things.

One of the greatest things that I discovered with emails that I am sure you are aware of is rules on Outlook. I am not sure what you use for your emails, but I am sure most email programs have something similar.

I get so many emails on a daily basis that I find it challenging to keep up with all of them. One thing that might help you is to maybe great categories, so those emails that come on a daily basis that are less important, but should not be trashed can go straight to a folder on my outlook. Additionally, I get the chance to see the email as it comes into my blackberry, so if it is really, really important I can pull it up.

When I was in the mortgage business we used to get rates on a daily basis from 40-50 lenders, some of whom sent rates 3-4 times a day. It completely filled my inbox with rates that I was not sure that I needed until I had a client for their program. Once I put the emails into my rules, it reduced my emails from 150-200 emails per day to only 30-40 emails per day. It was much more manageable and cheaper than hiring an assistant to do the work. Additionally, it only took me 15-20 minutes to set up the rules for most posts.

I hope this helps and was not too wordy!

Andy
.-= Andy Nathan´s last blog ..Follow Friday Shout Out Video Of The Week! =-.