Susan Gregory

I’m not a big fan of using email folders.   I use Microsoft Outlook and prefer to move emails to the task function and then change the subject so I know exactly what to do rather than re-opening and re-reading a filed email.

There is one email folder that I find useful, which is “receipts”.   When I get an invoice or a receipt via email that has been paid, I put it in that folder so it’s easy to find later when I’m doing my expenses or accounts.

I know other people use email folders and as I’m always interested in new ways to improve productivity, I’d like to know what email folders others find useful.

Some examples that I’ve seen include folders labeled: “To Answer” “To Do” “To Read” “Newletters” and folders labeled by project.

Are email folders useful for productivity?  What folders do you use?  Does it ever get confusing, for example when an email can go into more than one folder?

Please add your comments below or send me a message and I’ll write about this again soon!

Move information out of your inbox to where it belongs

A lot of time is wasted by opening and re-opening emails because the information has not been stored in the right place.  Why are you keeping that email in your inbox?  Often it’s because the message requires one of the five following actions:

1. Move to calendar
2. Move to contacts
3. Do something
4. Reply
5. Store for later reference

Here are some suggestions for dealing with each situation:

1.  Move to calendar – if you simply click and drag the email from the inbox to the lower left of your screen where you see the box marked “Calendar”, you’ll create a new appointment with the same subject line and all the text pasted into the body of the appointment – you’ll have all of the information you need for that event.

2.  Move to contacts – click and drag the email to the contacts section in the lower left of your screen.  The contact name will be automatically populated, as will the email address field.  You can cut and paste other details from the email into the relevant fields in the contact entry.

3.  Do something – if this email is a reminder of a task, why not use the task function to track things you need to do?  Once again, you can click and drag the email to the task function.  Once you’ve done that, it can be helpful to change the subject line to a reminder of exactly what you need to do, so you don’t need to keep opening the item to see what’s next.  You can also give the item a due date if necessary.

4.  Reply – if it’s quick to reply, do it right away.  If it’s not possible to do it right away, consider creating moving it to the tasks function so you can prioritize it with your other activities

5.  Store for later reference – if I receive an email that contains information that I may want to use later, I’ll file it electronically and also make a reminder for myself using tasks so that I have a list of documents to read if and when I have time later.

When creating a task, you have the option to add a category, which helps to group your tasks.  Why is this helpful?   There are several reasons:

1.  It can be productive to do similar tasks together – for example, if you have a list of phone calls to make, you can get into a flow of making one call after another.

2.  Prioritize by the type of task – make a category for all tasks relating to “High Value Clients” or “Impress My Boss” so you can get those done first.

3.  Group project tasks together – create a category for each important project and see what task is next for each at a glance.

Here’s how to do it:

Click Categorize, and then click one of the color categories on the menu. For more color categories, click All Categories.  You can edit each category to make meaningful groups of your actions, for example “Banking Project”, “High Value Client” “Phone Calls” or other categories that are helpful for you.

Once you have categorized your tasks you can sort the list by category.  In the tasks view click View then Current View then Customize Current View.  A dialogue box opens with buttons on the left. Click on the on Group By and select Categories.

It’s too easy to be distracted from the task at hand by incoming email.   Rather than read each email as it comes in, I recommend choosing certain times of the day or intervals for dealing with emails, such as checking every few hours.   So that you are not interrupted while working on other tasks, turn off distracting the distracting sounds and pop-ups.  Here’s how in Outlook 2003 and 2007:  Click on Tools from the top bar in Outlook then Options then the Preferences tab.  Click Email Options then Advanced E-mail Options and deselect the options under When new items arrive in my Inbox.

Please record your vote on my LinkedIn Poll.

I’ll be discussing the results here soon and please feel free to add any comments about how you keep your contact list up-to-date or the difficulties that you experience in doing so!