How I survive an overflowing inbox.......Frank Sinatra Style...!

We're all too familiar with emails.....(sometimes too many of them)....flooding into our inbox day in and day out. For many of us, our lives and jobs revolve around our inbox. We can often spend days just trawling through and answering those emails without actually ever getting to do your "day job".

For me, I have to take control back over my inbox.....I don't let it control me. I have to do this to stay sane....and here's how I do it.....

Firstly, I block out 3 small slots in my diary to review my inbox; first thing, lunch time and late afternoon.

As emails come in, I respond to those which I can answer straight away. And if I don't need them for future reference they are deleted. For those more important or those part of an ongoing project or topic I set up folders and often, sub-folders.

Then, once I have responded to that mail it's filed away where I can;

a) find it quickly and simply should I need to refer back to it and more importantly

b) it's out of my inbox.

For those emails I need to action later, I drag into TASKS, which automatically creates a new task. That email is then filed away for future reference etc, clearing my inbox. I then spend part of my day working through those tasks, setting reminders etc, including any additional correspondance. For those more urgent emails that don't warrant a task but perhaps I need to do some research into before responding - I set a flag.

For me, this works - my inbox is never over a screen page full so I can always see EVERYTHING and nothing ever gets missed. For me, if it goes below that bottom page you could run the risk of "out of sight out of mind" - I like to see everything. This is today's view of my inbox:

But of course, everyone does things differently, and everyone has methods that work for them in different ways. For example, my colleague Darren Strange, (Microsoft Office Product Manager) discusses how he does things on his blog - this works for him!

There is no right or wrong way to manage your inbox.....but the most important thing I think, is to ensure you control it and it doesn't control you! You need to find YOUR way to make it work for YOU. My way may help - I swear by it.....and for now....as the legend Frank Sinatra sings.......... "I'll do it my way"........

How do you manage your inbox?  Is it spiraling out of control?  Are you up until midnight "doing email?"  Perhaps my way could help you!