So I have gone back and forth on what my first post should be.. should I try and show off some knowledge, should I write a tutorial, should I tackle a new project and write about that?
Then I decided that maybe what I should really post is to find out how other people manage with probably my biggest weakness.. staying organized.
I head up a small team that works on a few projects at a time. Most of the key end users are the same, but the projects differ, though are often similar-ish. I get a ton of emails from people talking about different projects without any kind of subject line cue, and sometimes even emails covering multiple projects in a single email.. and if I'm being honest, my inbox is a MESS.
I've tried moving the emails based on project, but have a hard time where it covers multiple projects, and even then it's just breaking the mess up.
I've tried subfolders under each project but often can't classify them to a single issue etc. I tried splitting them by person, but that doesn't really help keep my focus to a single project (and one person in particular has about 30000 emails stretching back several years)
So I end up doing a big cleanup about once every few months and say to myself.. this time I'm keeping my inbox at 0 emails from now on.. but we all know I'm lying to myself.
How do you all keep your email organized, easy to search and without burying emails in a million subfolders never to be seen again?
Top comments (4)
Can you use a different method for organizing correspondence for projects? Can't imagine that ever staying organized without use of a ton of labels/folders.
Otherwise, I usually allocate a little time each day to email maintenance.
It's not so much that I'm anti-folder, just more that when there is that blurry line where an email is either not classifiable by my setup or where it covers multiple projects/issues.
I do try and do the maintenance, I start with the best of intentions, but somewhere a few days in I get busy, then it just slips. I really need to get things done at point of receipt I think
Yeah, that really sucks. :( If I come across anything I'll come back to this and let you know. I hope you find something that works.
Thanks. Hopefully I'll see some other replies where people show how they keep things in order too! :)