This is part 2 of my series on getting a handle on your email inbox. In part 1, I talked discussed David Allen's Getting Things Done Methodology. I can't emphasize his approach enough, he has help me and many friends clear our phsycic ram and get things done.
In this part I won't focus as much on Getting Things Done, but on explaining how I use Outlook Rules, Folder Heirarchy and Custom Folders Views to manage projects and eliminate inbox hell. Hopefully we can get you out of inbox hell with this and on the road to a single digit inbox. This is all based on lessons I've learnt managing my mail while working at Microsoft for the last 7 years. (We get a lot of email here :-)).
Outlook Rules
I always say, "Set too few outlook rules and you're inbox is swimming, set too many rules and you'll miss key mails or respond slowly." Be careful with rules, never set them on indidivual people.
I always set rules at the mailing/distribution list level. For example, I'll never set a rule to move mails sent to me from Robert Scoble to a special folder, but I will have mail sent to a distribution list like Steve Cellini's Team moved to a folder of its own.
I always tell folks when helping them get out of Inbox hell, your inbox is for mails that you are on the to: or cc: lines, thats it! By only having mail in your inbox with your name on the to: or cc: line you know right away that it is mail that an action needs to be dealt with.
So what about the mail that is sent to a distribtution list and has been moved to a folder?
By having emails sent to distribution lists moved to folders, you can group together conversations of the same context in a folder. It also helps you set priority of reading mail. There are social and technical discussion lists that I am on that may be interesting, but something I often can't read during the day. So I've got technical discussions about the Tablet PC Development all in one folder and the Canucks at Microsoft grouped together in another.
When the folders turn bold in the Outlook folder view I know there are new mails and can decide if I should read them now or defer until later. Also because all the replies are grouped closely together and not scattered amongst mail sent direct to me in my inbox, I can quickly jump to the latest response and read the whole thread. Nothing is more embaressing than jumping on an email and replying when the answer was given hours before.
So how do I create rules quickly? Outlook makes it a snap with the Create Rule icon in the toolbar.
The create rule button pops up a dialog populated with who the mail was sent to. I can quickly create a rule based on this message and after you filling in the blanks I can run it against my inbox. Perfect for those surprise distribution lists you all of a sudden become a member of without knowing ;-)
While working your way out of inbox hell, you can use this option to buzz through the mails in your inbox creating rules based on what broad distribution list the mail set to and select the option to run against your inbox now. Before you know it you'll be out of inbox hell.
Folder Heirarchy
The biggest mistake I often see folks make is they often go way to deep with their Outlook folder heirarchy, here's my Outlook folder layout.
Inbox
@Accepted Meeting Requests
@Action
@Autogroup
@Deferred
@Projects
@Waiting For
@Weblog Referrals
Distributions Lists
Biz - Some Distribution or mailing list
Biz - Some Distribution or mailing list
Biz - Some Distribution or mailing list
Dog - Some Distribution or mailing list
Dog - Some Distribution or mailing list
Dog - Some Distribution or mailing list
Dog - Some Distribution or mailing list
Soc - Some Distribution or mailing list
Soc - Some Distribution or mailing list
Team - Some Distribution or mailing list
Team - Some Distribution or mailing list
Team - Some Distribution or mailing list
Team - Some Distribution or mailing list
Tech - Some Distribution or mailing list
Tech - Some Distribution or mailing list
Tech - Some Distribution or mailing list
Tech - Some Distribution or mailing list
Tech - Some Distribution or mailing list
Tech - Some Distribution or mailing list
Reference
First these are just fictitous names of distribution lists (duh!). I use prefixes to apply order to my inbox folders. I like to have administrative type folders at the top of my folder heirarchy so I prefix those with an @ sign. A number of these were created by the Getting Things Done Add-in, it automaticaly moves mails related to actions, delegations or waiting for.
You'll also see Accepted Meeting requests, I automatically have confirmation mails for folks attending meetings I set up moved to this folder.
Weblog referrals are referrals from this blog that Dasblog kindly notifies me of.
Autogroup is an internal tool we use for managing distribution lists that I get notifications of people asking to join lists that I own internally. This is all pretty admininistrative and I like to have it grouped together.
The next set of prefixes I use are for my distribution lists. These are:
Biz - Business related / broad discussion on a core business
Dog - Beta testing of pre-release software or dogfooding as we call it here at Microsoft
Soc - Social discussion (Canucks at Microsoft or XBox discussion)
Team - Team mailing lists like our uber organization, my direct reports or my peers.
Tech - Deep technical discussions like C# Discussion or Tablet PC Development
Last but not least you'll see the folder called Reference. Would you belive I store reference materials across hundreds of projects and individuals in one folder? Am I nuts? Nope, and I don't usually use search either to find what I am looking for.
How do I do it? This reference folder uses Outlook 20003's custom folder views to organize the data by project. More on that in the next section.
The layout above gives minimal heirarchy, I can quickly expand and collapse it down to keep my focus on my inbox. If I need to keep extra focus on a particular distribution list, I add it to my Favorite Folders list in Outlook and its placed in Outlook's favorite folder Window so I can monitor it very closely for activity. As soon as its bold, it catches my eye and I can pounce on it!
Custom Folder Views
This works best for project management, if you use the Getting Things Done Add-in I talked about in my previous post. With the GTD Add-in you have a file button where you can assign a Project name to the mail. This additional metadata for my email allows me to organize my Reference folder into expandable/collapsible groups organized by Getting Things Done Project Name.
To apply this to a folder right click on the gray column headings and a context menu will appear and select Arrange By -> Custom
From the Customize View dialog box select the Group By dialog and finally the Group By Dialog. Here you want to choose User-Defined Fields in folder from the Select available fields from drop down button and set Group items by to Project.
Bing! You now have a folder organized by Getting Things Done Projects. It is a Much better than a sprawling list of folders that is very hard to manage. The good news is if a project changes a name you can reclassify things on mass using the Getting Things Done Admin menu.
Closing
So thats all I do, this is how I manage my mail. Give this a try and let me know if this helps clean out your inbox and manage your mail more effectively.
I've been using these strategies in one form or another for the last 7 years. For the most part my inbox sits at about 15-20 items throughout the day, lets see what this can do for your bulging inbox today.
Enjoy!