F.A.T your email!
I know that most of the content on Glimmerick is book related, but occasionally there will something that I have stumbled upon that I think that will be especially valuable to my readers. Today is just a day like that.
Towards the end of last quarter, I was checking my Gmail (If you haven’t gotten one by now…I recommend you get a Gmail account because of the neat interface, powerful orginization tools, and seemingly infinite space). Anyways, back to checking me email story, my friend almost fell out of his chair when he saw that I had over 1500 messages in my inbox. I know I am not the only one who has had this problem, because I notice that many of my friends have hundreds and thousands of emails in theirs (at least all of mine were read!) He recommended that I use labels to neatly organize all of my email.
Labels are great, as they act like folders, yet incoming email can be automatically “tagged” into these labels, so a lot of mail is already organized when I check my email. Additionally, you tell incoming mail to bypass the inbox completely, where it will be found in the label. I found this best used for items such as Facebook, where I get a lot of notifications, yet they can clutter my inbox, and are not urgent. The biggest benefit I reaped from this system is having all of my emails organized by labels. For example, I get dozens of emails from my professors and emailing lists from the university. I can tell Gmail to put all of my emails from Econ201@u.XXX into a label so that I am not sifting through scores of emails to try and locate class related emails.
I cannot tell you how much time I have saved by reducing my inbox total from 1500+ to 0! No more clicking “Next 50″ to find that one email that is evading my search query. However, my inbox did not stay empty for very long. And they began to pile up, and I let them grow, up to 10-15 at a time. I recently stumbled across the F.A.T. (File, Act, Toss) system while reading blogs that has helped me be on top of my email. It is pretty simple to do: When you get an email that you need to save for later reference, File it! If it is an email that you can reply to in a short amount of time, reply to it now, don’t wait. Act on it! Otherwise if it is not necessary to keep around, toss that email in the trash!
I hope this has helped you become motivated to clean out your cluttered dusty inbox. Effective organization is a key to success in most career fields today, and it starts on the basic level, and from there, orginization techniques build off of the smaller ones.
The Bottom Line:
- Organize your email in clearly labeled folders/labels.
- F.A.T. your email; do not let email pile up.
- Unsubscribe to those newsletters you delete every day, but don’t read (I had a few of those)
June 18th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Hmm, interesting. While I have never come close to that many e-mails (I automatically delete most), that is a good idea. I have three e-mails-one for school, one for junk, and one for friends, etc. Maybe I can finally consolidate to one and organize it. Hmmm….
Danika’s last blog post..Random Music
June 18th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Ah great point, as I forgot to mention of the coolest features about Gmail. You can have email forwarded to your email, and send from that same email. Let me give an example. I have my regular email xx[at]gmail.com and another xx[at]gmail for this blog. But I also have a school one as well, xx[at]u.washington.edu. I have all the email that is sent to the [at]u.wash forwarded to the [at]gmail. However, some school filters do not allow emails from other clients (e.g. hotmail, yahoo, gmail) to be sent to professors, so I used a tool with gmail to be able to send email from my xx@gmail, but appearing as though I had sent it from my xx[at]u.wash one. It sounds complicated, but I am sure this lifehacker article explains it a lot better than I did!
June 18th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Awwwwww, yeah. I am “that friend” he is referring to. Props to you for spreading the word about labels!
Michael’s last blog post..Update: Did I mention I’m a pioneer?
June 18th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
I love Gmail. It is a very powerful program with lots of utility, it’s integrated with many other Google applications that I use (though not to the extent that I would like to see), and it’s very portable being web-based instead of a desktop client. Which means that I can truly access my email anywhere from any computer and still have the same abilities and am able to pick up where I left off.
Keeping a clean inbox is essential for maintaining a GTD mentality. It may not immediately make sense but being a big doubter of gaining anything by maintaning a clean inbox, having made the switch, it truly does make a big difference. A lot of time tends to be wasted in idle email surfing. It’s very refreshing only having the emails that I need there. I use it as sort of a bulletin board of what needs to be addressed and as a sort of to-do pile.
I also take full advantage of Gmail’s filter and label systems. Everything that’s automated and doesn’t require an immediate response skips my inbox and goes directly into my Bac’n filter. I used to waste my time checking my email everytime I’d get a new message notification and it’d only be a facebook or myspace notification. Automated messages that are nice to look at but don’t have a strong priority (like personal mail does) all go there. I also love being able to attach school labels to all my email depending on coursework so that I can find stuff later on.
A lot of time and clarity of mind can be saved by adopting a clean inbox and email organization practices. And I’m all about efficiency you know~
Trebonte’s last blog post..The Plan Of Attack
June 18th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
I love gmail’s label and filter options. I’ve been a zero inbox crusader for almost a year now.
@tage: Lifehacker rocks!
Rabenstrange’s last blog post..Seattle Central Library
June 19th, 2008 at 12:12 am
I forgot. What’s F.A.T?
Rabenstrange’s last blog post..Seattle Central Library
June 19th, 2008 at 12:48 am
@Rabenstrange: F.A.T. stands for File, Act, or Toss; and if one does this with every email, clutter=0.