I happened to walk up on my charming & delightful roommate while she was mindlessly poking at her computer; I could see she was in her email, releasing a periodic heavy sigh.

“What are you doing?”

“Cleaning my inbox – there’s so much garbage in it that I can’t find anything.”

I looked – she’s right. It’s a mess.

How does it get that way?

“Sign up to become a member of our community”.

“Request a free catalog”.

“Get notified of the latest sales and online coupons”.

“Like us on Facebook”.

Any one of these may plop your mail address in many a mailing list, including lists for which you never signed up.

You might be wondering if it’s too late to stem the tide (or tidal wave). Admitting the problem is the first step – here are a few suggestions get yourself on a better path.

Declare Email Inbox Bankruptcy

Step 1: Select All in the Inbox (Ctrl-A)

Step 2: Delete All. 

Step 3: Confirm deletion.

It’s a harsh step, but sometimes that’s the only way to do it. Here’s a secret: I’ve done it. The theory is that if it’s really important and requires action, senders will often resend it to you (at least in the work world, anyway). It’s surprisingly effective (if you’re comfortable doing it). Once you do it, though, you need to take measures to help keep it clean. So keep reading.

Unsubscribe

Sometimes this is helpful, but it really depends on the credibility of the source. Reputable companies and list managers will truly unsubscribe you, others simply just move you to different lists because you’ve now verified that your address is valid so it’s gets “repurposed” (looking at you, Klaviyo, you bastards). In those cases, it’s like playing Whack-A-Mole.

Use your Junk Mail folder

Most mail systems now have some intelligence behind them, along with a junk mail or spam folder. If you move a message to junk, it teaches the mailbox what junk is for you, and it will start automatically moving things there. Sometimes it misfires, so check it every now and then to make sure there are no false positives. Mark them as “not junk” to keep future messages from a sender out of the junk mail folder.

Use a mailbox rule or two (but not 12)

This is actually the method I use. It’s considered heresy around Pug Hollow to receive a coupon and just completely disregard a savings opportunity while at an establishment I frequent. The answer to that dilemma is to add a rule (Gmail calls them filters) to the mailbox that identifies the frequent-fliers and simply move them to a different folder in my mailbox (for me, that folder is fittingly called Sales Crap). If I’m out and think I have a coupon I can use, I can look in there. Every few weeks or so, I empty the folder with two clicks (instead of wading through my inbox). Incredible time, noise, and stress saver.

Pro Tip 1: Some rules engines (like the one in Outlook) allow you to run your rule on demand on already received items. It’s like taking a firehose to clean your inbox (and helps avoid the bankruptcy path).

If we’re talking about your work inbox, coupons and sales messages may not be the problem; the dreaded CC: on messages might be burying you instead. For that, I’ll refer you to this item from Scott Hanselman about the one email rule that everyone should have. The short version is move those CC: items out of your inbox and into a different folder. CC: can (and should) be translated to FYI. Things that require immediate action should have me in the TO: line. For people that get a crazy amount of mail, this can be life changing.

Be careful not to get nutty and start creating sets of exotic rules or filters that help manage some crazy folder/filing system in your mailbox. You will end up spending more time managing the system than you should. 

Pro Tip 2: Other than my Sales Crap folder, I don’t use folders and there are absolutely no folders nested in other folders. Search is powerful – if I need to find something, it’s proven to be very effective without the headache of maintaining a filing system. If you combine it with using things like Categories or tags, searching on tags is a lot easier than a folder structure.

These tips should help you even the fight with the onslaught of incoming mail.

How you reply matters

If you answer a lot of questions (like I do), it’s really easy to get buried in responses to those questions. They take a lot of time to answer. The bad part about that is (at least in my case) answering the repeat questions – because it’s really rare when I get a true “one-off” request. 

So we have to ask ourselves this question: do they deserve the gift of my/your keystrokes in the form of an answer? It depends on how you bundle and distribute those keystrokes. Going back to Scott Hanselman, take a peek at three and a half minutes of this keynote he delivered. I’ve adopted this approach and can attest to its value. I recommend the whole keynote, but this will jump you to the 18:05 mark.

Spoiler alert: don’t answer in email, unless that email has a URL to the answer.

For my work, I really don’t like using email for collaborating; it’s harder to do, and there are much better tools for group work. I speak to people about better collaboration a lot, because it really does make a difference if you’re willing to change the way you work a little bit. If you’re interested in more on these ideas, drop a note or leave a comment and I’ll share some thoughts.