how can I get my email inbox under control?

by Alison Green on August 29, 2024

It’s the Thursday “ask the readers” question. A reader writes:

I’m writing for any reader advice on managing high volume email. I am in my first year as middle management in a job that swings around a peak season and an off-peak season. I am pretty good at what I do, happy to have my position, and think I’m doing a pretty good job overall with managing my team, strategizing for my role, and generally delivering. My boss gives me good feedback too. But the email!

We have a peak season that’s approaching, and my inbox has exploded. I am already getting up to 150 emails a day and growing. It’s a mixture of informational stuff, people needing stuff from me, things I need to action, updates and so forth. But it’s relentless. I was unexpectedly unwell and I came back from a few days leave to an absolute anxiety inducing nightmare.

I am doing zero inbox strategies as best I can, but I’ve never experienced anything like it. I’d love the commentariat to teach me how they manage it. In particular, I’d love to know if there is any actual real training that I can do. I feel under prepared, and before next season I would love some better training than just reading articles and tips, if it exists! But I’ll take any tips I can to get through this first season.

Readers, what’s your advice?

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{ 304 comments }

{ 304 comments… read them below }

    1. Justme, The OG*

      I did that and then lost track of all emails that weren’t coming into my inbox. I just ignored them because my brain didn’t recognize them as important. So that will work for some people but not others.

      1. CTT*

        Rules are better for me for office-not-quite-spam (daily menu at the restaurant in our building, newsletters I can’t unsubscribe from, etc.) with subject lines that are extremely unlikely to be used in any other context.

        1. Antilles*

          That’s how I use Email Rules too, for handling the flood of emails that come out regularly but where it’s not really relevant. I understand why Corporate IT sends out email warnings about overnight maintenance, but as I mostly work normal hours, it doesn’t affect me 98% of the time. In the rare case where I *would* be working off hours, then I can just go to the folder and check.

      2. Sunflower Patch*

        Yeah, you have to build in another step in your processes of checking those folders. I find it works well for newsletters and other random lists that I need to see eventually but not immediately.

        1. Bumblebee*

          This is how I used rules. I just keep everything in my inbox and flag what needs to go on the to-do list (literally, apply a flag and it transfers over onto my “flagged emails” list in Microsoft’s to-do app). I was filing things and losing them and generally not finding it helpful, and then I read about a study that showed doing this did not decrease the time it took to locate needed info – so I quit doing it and never looked back!

          1. Reluctant Mezzo*

            Some folders I only check late on Fridays when my brain is tired anyway. Others I check as soon as stuff gets in them. It’s a learning process.

      1. Kitty Cat Career*

        It’s a system you can create in Outlook (I don’t think there’s similar option in Gmail) where you create a “Rule” such as everytime you get an email from a certain person or a subject that has a certain phrase, you can program it to go to a specified folder, delete it, mark it as read, etc.

        1. Tongue Cluckin' Grammarian*

          Gmail has filters and you can program them with the same behaviors as Outlook.

        2. Llama Wrangler*

          It’s called filters in gmail (it works slightly differently but functionally the same).

      3. juliebulie*

        Like you can filter all of your Teapot-related stuff into one folder and your Llama-related stuff into another, and only look at those emails when you’re working on teapots or llamas. Or you receive a daily report that you usually don’t pay much attention to, so you filter that into its own folder so that it’s not in your way.

      4. Resume please*

        Essentially, you make a bunch of folders, “Teapot Tech Support”, “Teapot Company General Announcements”, etc. Then you right-click on an email in your inbox (I’m using outlook as an example, but gmail has Rules too), go to “Rules”, then you can make a rule where this email and all emails like it (based off of subject title, sender, etc, your choice) goes to a specific folder that you created. For me, it helps separate the important from the non-important, and definutely lessens my inbox inflow. Things don’t get buried in the weeds (as often)

    3. Tclark*

      Rules are great, as long as you start checking folders for emails if something goes wrong. I work in IT and when we have something like our VPN go down, we email the business. Problem is, most people would have those emails filtered because some outages are not relevant to them.

      1. CL*

        Yup. Over-filtering is a major issue.

        OP, there are ways to set rules that don’t involve moving the email. For example, all emails from important person XYZ is in Red. Helps you prioritize the urgent issues

        1. email settings*

          This is called Conditional Formatting and is found under View Settings. (It took me forever to find this when I tried to do it.)

          I have my boss in bright pink, and her boss in bright red with a “big” font (that’s literally the setting). It’s helpful!

      2. Caramel & Cheddar*

        Outlook used to have a really useful feature to avoid this: Quick Steps. You could essentially set up rules that didn’t have a condition applied, so they didn’t run automatically as soon as something hit your inbox. It let you check something, choose your “File to Llama Folder” Quick Step, and then have that email whisked away. It was a big time saver for filing stuff to the same folder(s) over and over.

        I’m someone who doesn’t check folders for new emails but I did like to archive by folder, so this helped me accomplish this. Outlook seems to have gotten rid of this feature, though, so if anyone knows how to recreate it, please let me know.

          2. Caramel & Cheddar*

            Oh my god, how did I not see that? I wonder if it was just not there at first when I switched to New Outlook and then never looked for it again. Thank you, this is a lifesaver!

        2. Reluctant Mezzo*

          I also archive with folders. If I really have to find that email from March by so-and-so about the banquet that we had in April, I can.

    4. Retail Dropout*

      Hard agree! I have a TA-style position at my college where I work with students, and using Outlook rules to route my emails by class keeps me sane

      1. Ariaflame*

        Of course this only works if the student puts the class identifier in the subject, or there’s a way that communications are automatically labelled.

        1. zuzu*

          You can also create rules that do this by sender; since you know who’s in the class, you can create rules that put anything from these senders into this class folder and anything from those senders into that class folder.

          1. Froggy*

            Which works OK as long as you have no other communication from that person. For example, you may have some of those students are officers in the student club, are interested in summer jobs/research, or may be your grad student who are also taking a course from you. So, does have issues.

    5. DrSalty*

      This. I also have rules to sort by project/client and that’s huge. It automatically organizes so I can just get to work.

    6. SummitSkein*

      I came here to say all of the things in the above thread. For me, having things set to filter to an inbox subfolder via rules, and using Quick Steps for other items, has been an absolute game-changer. I try to do zero-inbox, and use the flags to let me know what still needs processing vs. what’s important. I’m always trying to keep notifications as low as possible, so using a rule where it moves to a different folder but stays unread helps me remember that something is in a folder that I need to look at at some point, even if it’s not urgent.

      (All of this, of course, being predicated on the theory that you’re using Microsoft Outlook. Maybe look for Outlook courses that teach these features?)

    7. Arrietty*

      One extremely irritating thing about Outlook is that you have to set rules (and signatures) separately for desktop and online Outlook.

      1. bishbah*

        If you set all of your rules in online Outlook, they will process “server-side” and will work for desktop Outlook. But not vice-versa. So even though I mainly use the desktop UI, every time I need to create a new rule I crack open Outlook 365…

  2. T.N.H*

    Set up rules! The idea here is that even if you’re out, your inbox will sort itself, at least at the first level. Some email clients have AI built in that will do a better job than just keywords, but you can at least get the company wide announcements one place, your team emails another, anything from your boss flagged as priority etc.

    1. Ansteve*

      While I won’t auto filter no spam I have set up rules to flag all communication from my boss and his boss. That way I will have a list of high priority items. It works for me at least.

  3. kjolis*

    Automatically filter emails into folders you create – that can weed out a lot of unimportant stuff (I have one labeled “Rando Vendors”) but also if there are businesses you interact with a lot, use that email suffix to catch all from the same business into one folder.

  4. Czhorat*

    One trick that helps is to sort by rather than – that usually puts like things together, and often I’ll have one person sending multiple emails on one thing.

    Then you *quickly* move anything upthread from the open thing you need to answer off to a subfolder, so your inbox is only the latest in any stream that you still need to address. I’ll also use the “flag” function for things I plan on addressing, and leave less important ones unflagged.

    1. Butterfly Counter*

      I teach university, but I use the same type of strategy.

      First, I do the cull. I go through and delete anything not truly important or uninteresting. This will include things like updates from publishers wanting me to use their texts or announcements from the university. Just immediately delete them.

      Then, I flag all of the very important things. I pin them at the top of my inbox to come back to when I can concentrate on answering them.

      Then, I respond to all of the easy, day-to-day emails. Student wants to know about when something is due, fine. A meeting was moved from Wednesday to Friday, noted. Coworker has a question about a particular student, here are my thoughts.

      Then I go back to the pinned emails and really work on those, unpinning as I go through them.

      1. No Longer Gig-less Data Analyst*

        This is very similar to my strategy. I don’t get quite as many emails as the OP, but it’s somewhere between 50-80 a day depending on if things are on fire or not. I’m cc’d on a lot of things because I work in a department of three and would have to pick up a project if say, my fellow PM quit with no notice, but don’t really affect my day to day workflow.

        I try to keep my inbox to no more than 12 emails at the end of each day, and I succeed at that most of the time.

        1. Scarlett*

          12 is my lucky number too! The number of times I triaged emails and there were 12 left…..I starting calling it inbox 12 (versus inbox 0, which is too stressful for me but very popular at my employer)

    2. bamcheeks*

      I do this whenever I’m returning from leave or haven’t been able to check email for a couple of days. Doing it by recipient is easiest, and means you can immediately delete the six automated newsletters from the Chamber of Commerce, the daily news summary from the intranet, and anything else repetitive or low-priority. Then I look for the emails from colleagues who copy you in for information and scan them to make sure they don’t need an action from me. Then read the whole chains from colleagues which LOOK like they need action, just to make sure they didn’t resolve themselves in the meantime.

      The trick, IMO, is to be really strict about going reverse order and delete the irrelevant and low-priority stuff— if you get caught on something high priority, you don’t get rid of the low-priority stuff and that’s when high-priority stuff gets lost in the mess, or it’s stressful because you don’t know for *sure* that there isn’t something important in there.

      The other trick is not to feel guilty about NOT reading the low priority stuff. If you’re getting that high a volume, you *have* to triage and not read some stuff. Sometimes you’ll have to tweak your priorities because you missed a mid-priority meeting because it was in a low-priority newsletter, but you just have to accept that when there’s mega high volume some balls are going to get dropped, and your job is not to catch *every* ball but to catch all the *important* balls.

      Hopefully that gets rid of 60-70% of your inbox— to be honest if you’re getting 150 emails a day and 100 of them can’t be immediately deleted after a brief scan, you’ve got a workload issue more than an email issue.

      1. Guacamole Bob*

        I agree with your last point, though the numbers vary by role and how your org uses email.

        One thing I’ve had to do is talk with direct reports and say “I’m going to ignore all emails of type X that we’re both on and assume you’ve got it covered. Let me know if you need anything on those or need me to step in.” Given our org it does make sense for me to be cc’d on a lot of stuff – it really helps my understanding team workload and all the different projects we have going on with other teams because there are a lot of interrelated projects. But in terms of the actual work, I need to lean into delegation and let it go, trust that people on my team can handle it and will bring issues to me, and just skim and file a lot of that email.

      2. OP with the wild inbox*

        OP here. I agree it’s a workload issue, but it’s the nature of the job. Right now it’s our major event season and as middle management I am a conduit for masses of comms and tasks from both above and below me, and from external players too. it’s up to about 200-250 the last few days (event starts tomorrow eek!)
        Luckily in about 3 weeks it will all dissipate again til next year. I have been sorting into ‘from’ then by date, you’re right that does help.

        1. bamcheeks*

          I think for four weeks that’s manageable! But I would get comfortable saying that you don’t read newsletters, FYIs, CCs etc during those four weeks unless they relate directly to the work. You may even be able to set a bounceback that says that and asks people to contact you again in October if they haven’t had a reply from you about an issue they need.

        2. journeyboots*

          Hi OP! Do all of these messages need to be via email? Sometimes using Slack or Teams can cut down on the emails, or using other apps which more efficiently capture work between colleagues relative to email.

    3. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

      I think maybe html tags ate your content? Because the first line is “One trick that helps is to sort by rather than” So, sort by X rather than Y, but what are X and Y?

    4. Rena*

      I used this to clean up my inbox really quickly yesterday. Sort by sender is a game changer, thank you!

  5. Manic Pixie HR Girl*

    People have already suggested rules which I agree. The single most effective one for me is the CC rule. Filter all emails where you are cc’ed into a separate folder. You’ll see them, but they won’t be front and center in your inbox so you can look at them when you have time and have dealt with the more pressing matters.

    1. Goddess Sekhmet*

      I agree with this. It was life changing for me. If anyone complained that I hadn’t done something in an email, I pointed out that they had copied me in so I assumed nothing was required from me and it was information purposes only.

      1. Arrietty*

        I find this an odd way to determine whether or not you’re meant to respond – I don’t think it’s an accepted norm that only the To field means you’re relevant. In fact, based on my experience training people how to use Office, I suspect many people don’t even know you can put multiple addresses into the same field, and are manually adding a new CC line for each extra address after the first.

        1. Gatomon*

          A variation of this might work. Anything sent to a department distribution list is likely less critical for me *specifically* to handle, versus something sent directly to me.

          Personally I get a lot of emails blasted to our entire department that are not relevant to my specific position in it. I used to save these just to keep informed, but now I simply delete on arrival. I’m too busy to jump in areas I’m not really well versed in.

  6. Kate Monday*

    Use filters/rules (different platforms call them different things)! Even just using the labeling is helpful even if you still have them all come to your inbox. I also have filters for listserv emails to skip the inbox and go directly to a folder.

        1. WheresMyPen*

          My only criticism of conversation view is that sometimes if there’s more than one reply, the earlier ones get hidden in the thread and I miss them. But in general it’s helpful.

  7. CTT*

    Do you have distinct projects or another method of categorization? I can also get a high volume of email and being able to sort it into folders by project is really helpful, both for long-term organization and day-to-day management. If I come back from grabbing lunch to 25 emails on the same topic, I can move them into the right folder and now I’m reviewing them in a silo with just the project and not in my inbox where they might be sandwiched between other projects that distract me. (And if you move it into the folder, then you are closer to Inbox Zero even if it is really Subfolder Fifty Billion!)

    Also, if you’re using Outlook, I’ve found that their task system to flag emails works for me but only if I’m really diligent about reviewing it every day. When I’m dealing with a lot of emails and have 20+ flagged, I’ve set a reminder near the end of the day to go through them.

    1. OP with the wild inbox*

      I sort into categories by type of email, like from vendors, accounts, select aspects e.g. collateral, web. I have seperate folders for my three biggest partners only. I can’t seperate everything into project folders as there are too many I’d have more than fifty.
      But it doesn’t feel like I’ve got the right mix yet.

      We use Outlook, I really miss Gmail’s tags system! I wish I could give emails multiple tags.

      1. Ginger Baker*

        You can! Only for Outlook, it’s Categories, and then you can have the View set to Sort by Categories (and can of course change it up when you don’t want it sorted that way)

    2. Hamster Manager*

      I do this with a slight difference: my project folders are for completed items, anything that needs action on my part stays in the inbox until it’s completed, that way my inbox functions as a to-do list as well.

      Also OP: SNOOZE IS YOUR FRIEND! I ruthlessly snooze away emails I don’t need to deal with that day, it helps a lot.

      1. FunkyChicken*

        I also keep things in Inbox until they are dealt with, and then move to folders by categories for easy finding later.

  8. HailRobonia*

    One mistake I made when I started my new job this past January was to create a bunch of folders – like a dozen or so – for the various categories of emails I work with. That might work for some people but it is WAY too granular for me, I am slowly working on combining them and reorganizing them in a more useful way.

    I have a a few that are specific for various topics (such as finances), some for specific email lists I am on (so all IT/system updates etc. go there), and the two most important: Completed and In-Process.

    The joy of dragging an email into the “completed” file, though tiny, can be exquisite.

    1. Guacamole Bob*

      Email search has gotten so much better over the last 5 or 10 years that I don’t feel nearly the same need to carefully file email into specific folders that I used to. A ton of my email gets dumped into a couple of large folders and I mostly use search to find old stuff anyway.

      1. Pam Adams*

        This is my process- I have a couple of automatic folders that grab things like student appointment confirmations, some more folders where I can file things as needed, and everything else lives in my inbox.

        I also leave emails open until answered, or, if I have to shut down, re-mark them as unread. I check the ‘unread emails’ view once every day or so to look for things I’ve missed.

      2. Nightengale*

        e-mail search worked a lot better before I worked somewhere that archives things after 2 months

        Fortunately I can still get to the archived stuff but it adds extra steps into the search. Yes, that e-mail from 2 years ago is actually still quite relevant!

        1. Jen with one N*

          Outlook (assuming your administrators have not disabled it) lets you prevent emails from getting archived. I don’t think you can stop it from archiving all messages altogether, but if you know you’ll be referring back to individual messages you can assign a retention or archiving policy to it, like never archive or archive after X time. (I think it’s under the Rules button but I’m at home and don’t have Outlook here )

          1. Nightengale*

            our organization set up the archiving so I don’t think I have a choice

            sigh

            at least it isn’t outright deleting the older messages at least

      3. OP with the wild inbox*

        I don’t find search super helpful, it’s like I’ll search keywords but fifty emails will come up and I’m scrolling and scrolling. There are common terms that many many vendors use so search pulls everything, it’s not super useful. In my team we are working on better subject line use but externals name stuff all sorta of whack suggestions.

        Another issue is subject lines not getting adjusted even when the bulk of the message has changed from it’s original purpose. So the content is hidden inside the email. I def need to use some kind of categorisation.

        1. Gumby*

          Also, I discovered this week that search only works on the header data of encrypted emails – even if they were internal emails – in Outlook. (I was reading an email that said “Search your inbox for ‘llama wranglers’ to see if…” and my search on llama wrangler didn’t show the email that I was just reading.) Several people in my company regularly send emails encrypted by default so search has limited utility for me. Though learning this explained some recent frustration since I can be *positive* I had an email on [topic] and search is all “nope, never heard of it.”

    2. 653-CXK*

      I used to do that – separate everything into its own folder in Outlook so I could find things more readily. My boss and I discussed that when we had a one-on-one, and she suggested I use one folder and search. That works out better, and I now use Categories for the items I really need to monitor.

      1. TheBunny*

        I have folders for my boss and my direct reports.

        The rest are things like “Finance” “IT” etc.

      2. Jen with one N*

        Same. I tried folders but would forget how I had filed something. Now I keep everything in my inbox (realize this gives some the heebie jeebies!) I use conditional formatting: different colors for specific senders and messages that are addressed to me individually (rather than group distros I am a member of), also bigger bold font for unread messages. Also ctrl+shift+F offers more search criteria than just that search bar at the top of Outlook.

    3. Rose*

      I think it’s job dependent. I’ve had jobs where it was helpful to have many different categories of folders and sub folders so I could open one and see all the relevant emails related to that topic.

      My current job I have a few folders for emails that are auto-sorted by rules, but if I’m actually reading and manually filing emails I’ve got five; one for support tickets in my most used software, one for my IT helpdesk tickets, one for expense reports, and done. Everything goes into one of those folders and I just search for stuff I need.

      My shared team email has at least 500 folders. We could probably condense some of them, but I doubt any streamlining would get us much below 400 and we would just have to keep adding more.

    4. Middle Aged Lady*

      What worked for me was to make my email file names match my paper file names and my network drive file names as closely as i could, so it was all one “system” iny mind.

      My biggest issue was things I sent, but needed to follow up on again. I flagged them for sorting and checking later.

      I also established times of day I devoted to email and let colleagues know so they didn’t expect immediate answers. If I paid attention to every new message as it came in, I wouldn’t get anything done!

  9. Ultimate Facepalm*

    When I read email, I read a chain at a time so I can knock them all out at once.
    I color code by topic / project.
    I flag anything from certain staff members as important
    I do read meeting invite responses because there is sometimes feedback in there.
    I block out time for emails – usually when it’s really quiet – early morning, evenings / weekends.
    I block out time on my calendar to confirm people are attending my meetings, responding to my emails, things I need to follow up on to ensure people have responded to my emails.
    I file all of them, so only what’s important / unaddressed is left in my inbox. I go through those 1-2 times a week.
    I never delete any emails so I can keep track of old conversations for reference.
    I get to urgent things immediately, and leave less urgent things for later in the day or later in the week.

  10. STG*

    I receive a variety of emails and system notifications since I run an IT team. I do a fair bit of categorizing and color coding personally and then rules based on those categories.

    For example, my director has their own category. Any email from her changes the font to be a little larger in my inbox as well as changes to a unique color. This lets it stand out among the others.

    Rules to automatically file away the system notifications that I don’t need proactively but might need for research down the road.

    Still like that.

    1. Mia*

      How do you make it so the font changes to be a little larger? Because I love this idea and want to steal it.

      1. Lisa B*

        Oooo, I used to do this! If I was the only “TO” then I had the font size bigger. In outlook, go to View / View Settings/ Conditional Formatting. Mark whatever rule you want of the suggested options, but I preferred going to “add” and then “condition” and then you have tons of choices. I liked “the only one on the To line” because I knew for darn sure that one needed something from me, specifically. Click the Font button and you can make it bigger, red, bold, whatever. If I recall only the header of the email was in the different font.

        1. Scoobs*

          It looks like new Outlook doesn’t have this–just limited options for what to screen for and only text colors as the conditional formatting. What a bummer! This would be so handy.

        2. asterisk*

          Awesome! Alas, New Outlook only has color coding, not other font changes. But I’m going to try this out!

  11. Snarkus Aurelius*

    I fell in love with an email hack I learned on here. (I hate any sort of “hack” because they’re usually a farcical rebranding of something that has already existed for decades.)

    Set an automated prioritization that makes emails with you as the *sole* recipient show up at the top of your inbox and then any email where you are one of multiple recipients is a lower priority. Respond to the lower priority emails towards the end of every day. A majority of the time the question on the multiple recipient emails will be resolved by the time you get to it.

    1. LibraryCat*

      I’ve been using rules and folders for many years now but this one is new to me and makes a whole lot of sense! Outstanding!

    2. HonorBox*

      I like this a lot. Depending on the specifics of the LW’s industry and how people handle email, the only tweak I’d make to your suggestion is to set aside a bit of time right after lunch to review too. That way if they need to weigh in on something that they’re cc’d on, it isn’t falling to the end of the day. But sole recipient prioritization makes so much sense!

    3. 2e asteroid*

      I find this interesting, because I almost think my job needs the opposite!

      Usually actual one-on-one interaction is via chat and email is reserved for group conversations. But sometimes I need to be the one who moves the group conversation forward, and if so then there are potentially a large number of people waiting on my response. If someone sends me an email one-on-one, it’s probably an FYI or low-priority thing as anything urgent would have been a chat message.

    4. OP with the wild inbox*

      Ooh nice! I do try to leave some things to resolve themselves but hadn’t thought about a rule to help with that.
      I wonder if it can seperate external groups from internals too?

      1. Formerly in HR*

        You probably can set up a rule for everyone whose email is not your company’s domain (i.e if sender is not @teapotsinc.com, then file to…).

  12. Katie Porter's Whiteboard*

    As some other commenters have suggested, setting up filters can be life-changing if you’re getting emails that you know you don’t need to read. I don’t get near the same number of emails as the letter writer but I have tried to train myself to start my morning email run with the goal of filtering and labeling instead of responding. It helps me prioritize the actionable emails once I do have the time to answer emails.

    1. mcm*

      This is my advice as well! Filtering and responding are two different task categories for me. I filter first thing and THEN go back and respond, so I feel like I have a sense of what’s in my inbox before I’m jumping in on anything.
      I typically dedicate the first hour of my day (more if I’ve been out) to filtering and then quick replies. I go through every email, to-do-listing everything that needs something from me as I go, and then once I’ve read everything, start with the to-do-listed emails that are just “respond.” Once I’ve gone through those, I do the longer email tasks throughout the day (ie, if I have to create something etc. for an email).
      I get a lot of emails, and I do use rules as many commenters mention, but in some ways with high volume there’s no way around it taking time. What’s worked for me is splitting up reading, filtering/labeling/sorting, and responding into different task categories, so “email” isn’t one all-consuming task.

  13. JennG*

    Block a meeting on your calendar every day that is your time to do email.

    At the end of the day while there are lots of tactics you can apply to your email and some automation that will help, you will still need time to go through your email.

    For me, when I had a slightly higher than that volume of email I booked 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at the end of the day – at some points, where I was the blocker on simultaneous projects if I didn’t get approvals in, 45 minutes in the morning.

    I used that time to:
    – move and delete email. I keep informational things in folders in my inbox so that I can go back to them when I need to, like I have “media updates” and “process changes” and in the past I’ve sorted information by portfolio or client.
    – flag things I need to work on and turn them into calendar time/to do items too, like “review document X” booked for 2:15-2:45 this afternoon
    – have a ‘waiting on’ folder – things that someone else needs to do that I need to follow up on
    – deal with the “anything under 2-3 minutes” category up front: Get people answers, connect people, acknowledge information, update contact lists, etc.

    I’m sure people will have better tips on how to use email tools.

    Structurally, does your team use anything like Asana or other project management tools? Over the long term something like, *properly used* (which is the hard part) can help a lot, both by separating the team internal project functioning into one space and also just reducing the inbox chaos.

      1. MozartBookNerd*

        Hey I recognized it too! That book was a big help to me, and still is! (But it’s much broader than what OP is looking for of course :D)

    2. OP with the wild inbox*

      Oh yes, we have project management software, a reasonable part of the email checking is turning enquiries into tasks and allocating them to the correct team member. You’re not wrong, getting it working at peak efficiency is going to take a lot more work in off season.

      it’s not a bad idea to have email block time. I do have ‘no meeting ‘ times but hadn’t allocated email time. Unfortunately it may need an earlier start in peak time to get ahead of the standing meetings that are locked in across the org. Or accept knowing it won’t be clear before those start.

      1. Another Kristin*

        Seconding the “dedicated email time” advice – I do this and it really helps! I also don’t like filters, I find I just never check the filtered folders and end up missing stuff. Having a dedicated time every morning for email, with periodic checks throughout the day in case something urgent has come in, has really helped me avoid being on Outlook all day long.

        I’d also suggest adding something to your email signature, or even setting up an auto-responder when you’re really swamped, to the effect that you receive a high volume of email and it might take you [x number of days] to reply. I bet your inbox will feel a lot more manageable if you don’t feel like you’re leaving your colleagues hanging.

        1. SchwaDeVivre*

          Seconding the advice to set an expectation for how long it may take you to reply! That, combined with dedicated email time, will help you also not stress about looking at every email as it comes in.

  14. Robert Smith's Hair*

    Using project management software across my team and organizationally has helped tremendously. We use Wrike. Instead of me sending an email to my boss – who gets too much email – with a cover sheet and approval for signature, I put everything there. They can comment, tag anyone else in who needs to be tagged, etc. All of my team’s tasks are in there, so I can get a sense of what everyone is doing at any given time.

    Dumb, but helpful: my staff is lovely and uses the little emoji reaction instead of sending back another message that said “thank you” or “got it”.

    Finally…I stopped filing stuff in my inbox. I just search. It was stressful for the way my mind works to constantly file. Good luck!

    1. Scholarly Publisher*

      I love the emoji reactions for in-house email. However, it turns out that the emoji reactions are sent as emails on my professional association’s mailing list — there was one memorable afternoon where my alert dinged 17 times in 12 minutes because someone at another company was going through their email backlog and reacting to announcements. So I avoid using reactions on messages with external recipients.

      1. Arrietty*

        Yes, if you are using a different email client from the recipient then the reaction will just generate an email with no content.

    2. elizelizeliz*

      I also stopped filing. Searching works well for me and i found i was leaving things in my inbox way longer–thus making it less helpful as a to-do list–if i felt i needed to file things in the right place. We use gmail at my job, and i have my setting on to archive after responding. I also archive anything that doesn’t need a response–gmail searches in the archive automatically, so i can still get everything whenever i need it.

      Also, my hottest take is that 3 years ago i bulk archived all 10,000+ emails not from the previous 10 days and then just carefully went through those remaining emails for any action steps needed of me, archived all of them, and have been living the inbox zero/to do list inbox life ever since. It seems like a chaotic step but if i hadn’t done it i would never have felt like my inbox was manageable!

      1. OP with the wild inbox*

        Ha I haven’t done the bulk archive, but about three times this year I have sorted by ‘from’ and dumped a pile of emails from low value/impact senders and gotten it to zero. it just creeps up as I haven’t quite had the capacity to be strict with zero inbox strategies. this week averaging 200-250 a day! But it will start to ease over the next fortnight as our event season passes.

  15. Olivia*

    BOOMERANG OUTLOOK PLUG-IN. A life-saver for me, you can have things that need following-up pop back into your inbox, schedule emails, track what’s been answered, on and on.

    2. Scarlett*

      +1 to this (it’s called ‘snooze’ in Gmail). It’s great for things like, ‘I want to make sure someone handles this so I’ll ‘snooze’ a week to confirm it’s handled’, or ‘this is important but I want to spend time on my response and I know I’ll ah e time Thursday afternoon to get to it’. or, ‘gosh this will be a good reminder for March of next year

  16. Van Wilder*

    I use Outlook rules to move my important emails into the below categories. I check my Inbox only rarely. I used to try to do GTD/Inbox Zero but it’s just not a good use of my time and can be used an excuse to procrastinate.

    These are my folders:

    -Note to Self
    -Meetings
    – @VanWilder (anything that tags me or includes “Hi VanWilder” – usually a to do item for me)
    – VIPs
    – Client

  17. Dawn*

    I don’t know if I’d say there’s “real training” out there, but create folders and filters to direct mails into them. It really does work.

    I know that you said you lose track upthread, but most stuff, there’s no need for you to ever see it, and that’s probably a lot of what’s bogging you down, if you think that you need to read everything – you don’t.

    A lot of stuff should be marked as read and filed into an archive immediately. That way if you do need to circle back, you can, but for the most part you shouldn’t.

    And if you’re getting a lot of extraneous stuff, talk to the people sending it to you and ask them: to stop sending you things that you don’t really need to see, and to filter some or all of their “need stuff” requests through their managers – you’re in middle management now and it’s not your job to deal with every front-line thing, that’s why you have front-line managers.

    Anyway. You need to get firm about managing it, and accept that you shouldn’t be reading or even receiving all of it, imo. It can be tough when you’re first in a role like that not to feel like you have to be up to date on everything but you really don’t.

  18. Bookworm*

    Using conversation grouping (where all the emails in a thread are grouped together), just like Gmail does, is a lifesaver.

    I have vendors and coworkers who will copy me on things I don’t need to see at all. If you have people sending you stuff like that, try to get them to NOT cc you.

    1. Scooter34!*

      Coming to second this – Outlook has this feature too and it allows you to quickly read the latest, scan the others, and dispose of them all at the same time! I always thread, but you can turn it on when your box is overwhelmed and turn it off when it’s back to manageable as well.

    2. London Lass*

      This (grouping by conversation) was a big one for me. So much easier to track what’s going on and see who has replied!

    3. Scott*

      I turn mine on when I need to clear my inbox. I also turn off automatic marking as read. I added shortcuts to the top to mark as read or unread, and you can use CNTRL Q to mark as read as you go along. This helps avoid missing important items as you’re scanning through your e-mail.

      1. Lily C*

        Same. The auto-mark-as-read feature got me into trouble a couple times, so now every time our system gets updated, it’s one of the first things I turn off in Outlook, followed by turning on the conversation view.

    4. Lenora Rose*

      Query: when I’ve done this **in Outlook**, it prevented me from being able to find or open an attachment if another attachment was sent later in the conversation. So if one person sent a draft memo and another person sent commentary on it as a new file, I could no longer read the draft. Is there a way around this?

      Gmail doesn’t have that problem; if I need to find a specific attachment, as long as I can find the message in the conversation where it was originally linked, I can still open it.

      (Ideally, of course, I save attachments when I think I’ll need to refer to them, but reality strikes whenever we depend on what’s ideal alone.)

  19. No, this is Patrick*

    I’ve started using Outlook’s “Clean up folder” function. That way if there is a string of replies, it will delete all* but the most recent one, and that’s the one I’ll read and respond to.

    I also try pretty hard to spend 10 min every hour on email, and the rest of the time devoted to work – unless a message from my supervisor pops up – flagged by some of the methods already mentioned.

    * If older messages have attachments or off-string replies, it won’t delete those, which is also helpful.

    1. Mutually supportive*

      oooohhhh, I didn’t know what this feature is, thank you!

      how does it cope if multiple threads grow from one initial thread – does it notice and keep the last email from both (identically titled) email chains?

    2. Goodbye Consulting*

      +1 for the “clean up conversations” button. It’s especially a game-changer when coming back from vacation so you’re down to 1 email and can see how far you actually need to read down the thread to catch up.

  20. Healthcare Manager*

    Oh boy, my time to shine. I have been researching and working to perfect this for the last 10 years. I have about 150-200 emails and 4-5 hours of meetings a day. Normal in my industry, it means you need to email and multitask in every meeting. I’m required to be across a really wide range of projects and have other staff that do in depth level work so I can limit how much I need to understand.

    A. Inbox management

    My current strategy
    1. Folders set up to organise emails
    2. Categories on emails (action, monitor, reply pending) so can easily scroll and see which emails I need to do something/chase
    3. Quick sense check on every email in the pop up to see if I need to read the whole thing
    4. Trust people will follow up with me if I don’t see it (I don’t like this one, but it is common in my industry)
    5. Organise in downtime Prep notes with emails attached in my calendar for each meeting that day (4-5 a day)

    B. good method for emails that I need to follow up on or get to at a later date

    I do slightly differently in that I use categories (right click on an email in outlook and you can see categories and rename them).

    Step 1. I move emails from my inbox AND sent box into allocated folders for each project so I can see everything in the one folder and then scroll through or filter based on category (I do this with my emails once I’m back from leave and then go back to each folder to see what I need to actually do.)

    Step 2, name my categories and use the same colours for every job I have so I can skim my folders quickly
    Action: an email where I need to do something
    Monitor: an email where I don’t need to do something but someone else does and I need to keep track that a) they do it or b) I can then do my thing
    Reply pending: when I’ve sent an email to someone and I’m waiting for a reply
    Info: an email contains information I’ll want to refer back to at some point
    Done: to keep track of things that have been done / by myself or others (I use this in shared mailboxes, in my own I use the tick function)

    1. Automatically sort/mark for follow-up*

      I worry less now than I used to, and think this will optimize your category Awaiting Reply and going through Sent mail. The magic trick:

      Put yourself in CC or BCC of mails that will need follow-up (e.g. when you request something of others). Second, make a rule to do whatever you desire to emails FROM yourself with yourself in CC/BCC. Personally, I route them to a Follow-up folder that I check daily.

      Tada, no more worrying that you will forget something.

      1. Healthcare Manager*

        To Automatically sort/mark for follow-up,

        That’s a great idea. I’ll still need to sort them into the folders and do categories (there’s always a mixture of ‘follow up personally’ vs ‘monitor to make sure my team follow up’) but will def help me on the days I’m struggling to stay on top of sorting and give me a place to easily check.

    2. OP with the wild inbox*

      Do you mean you use colours for each project, or you use colours for status, e.g. move to folder but all action emails are yellow, all monitor are blue
      Sounds like we have similar workloads, I also have a whack of meetings and multitasking!

      1. Healthcare Manager*

        OP,

        Colours are categories (action is blue, follow up is orange etc). Because I’ve been using the same colours for over 10 years I can scroll really fast and my brain automatically knows when to stop when I see the colour I need.

        I’m a programme manager so I manage teams of project managers and need to be across dozens of different projects so def can’t do different colours for the projects.

        I use sub folders for my projects and do a sub-sub folder when there’s heavy traffic for one of them that would only last a short period.

        Ie IT > software > software update

        When organising them into folders I right click and can see the top 10 folders I’ve used that day. Generally that’s enough for me to organise as I go and I can go back at end of the day if not. (I’ll also implement that rule idea when bcc’ing from my self as that’ll help on days I struggle to stay on top of moving to correct folder).

  21. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

    Everyone else is focusing on rules, sub boxes, etc. and I do all that while trying to be a zero inboxer, but what really helped when I had a high volume of emails coming to me was setting my personal priorities and going from there. So, for example:

    1) Do a quick, first morning pass of my inbox, weeding out the stuff I don’t need to actively address and putting them in the subfolder if I don’t have to reply to them.
    2) Any email related to priority 1.
    2) Any email related to priority 2.
    3) Rinse, repeat.

    I also am the type of person who hits the easiest things first, then goes for the next hardest, etc. So, I’d do that with my emails- if I came into the office and there are 150 emails, I kill off the easiest ones first; then the next hardest; etc.

    But really, just finding your own rhythm, systems, and priorities is the key and ignore what everyone else tells you. If you’re in priority 1 and someone asks about a priority 3 thing? “That’s on my radar- I’m finishing up a few things and I’ll get back to that as soon as I can.”

    2. SchwaDeVivre*

      This is the comment I was looking for! I feel like if automatic rules helped, you’d already be doing them, LW. Instead, observe how you deal with your email when you feel like you’ve done so productively, and build your categories/folders/process around that. Then you can start to set expectations with others based on your process, and it’ll feel more predictable to you.

      Everyone is going to have a different way to triage their email — figure out what makes sense to your brainweasels and then process-ify it!

  22. Audrey Puffins*

    I use Outlook colour-coding a lot. I scroll through my emails and do the quickest possible triage – I delete out-of-office notifications, I slap a yellow on files that need to be downloaded, I slap an orange on anything that is for reference rather than needing a response, I slap a purple on anything I’ll need to refer to someone else, that sort of thing. I have my inbox sorted by Categories, and then I can go through all the like-for-like emails at the same time. Knowing that “this is my half hour for downloading files” makes the process much smoother than hopping from email type to email type. There’s probably a way to automate this with rules (and I have some of those too!) but quickly getting a visual on the shape of what the day’s inbox looks like is just something that works well for me.

  23. dude, who moved my cheese?*

    Hi! To answer your Q about real trainings, I can’t recommend any of these personally, but there are some out there:

    https://www.linkedin.com/learning/outlook-efficient-email-management-14975155 – paid, not sure the cost, well-rated

    https://www.linkedin.com/learning/how-to-get-and-stay-on-top-of-your-inbox – same

    https://www.lingfordconsulting.com.au/email-training/email-management-training-online – paid, variable prices under $100

    https://kellynolan.com/email – paid, $27, 7-day refund guarantee

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CYRA2rEXLs – free video course

  24. OneTwoThree*

    I am working towards getting my email box under control as well. It got out of hand for a bit.

    *I use Outlook’s snooze option regularly. I use this as a reminder to work on later or follow up with someone. Outlook then moves the email to a folder called “snoozed.” That reduces the clutter in my email box.

    *When cleaning out my email box, I sort by sender, subject line, and attachments. This helps me see all emails in a chain that can be processed/ deleted together. Attachments also usually mean something important to me, so it’s nice to highlight them.

    *I also use the pin feature for important emails I don’t want to lose track of.

    *I set up quick steps for repetitive tasks. For example, I have a “processing” quick step that forwards an email to admin, inserts a script for what to do with it, and moves the original to a specific folder within my email box.

    1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      Seconding the snooze feature. I inbox-zero and use my inbox as a to-do list, so with the snooze feature, I can easily get something out of my way until I actually need it next Thursday and it pops up as a new unread email, where if I just left it in my inbox then it becomes visual noise and I forget about it.

  25. Felicity Flowers*

    I love rules but if you’re looking for a couple of non-rule related suggestions:

    I configured my inbox so that emails from key people (like my Boss/VP/CEO, etc.) show up as a different color and larger font. Having them stand out in my inbox is helpful to identify which emails to review first to check for urgency.

    I also would recommend utilizing the “clean-up conversation” tool if your email system has one. This button deletes all earlier emails in a thread keeping only the most recent; for example if you’re cc’d on a back and forth email 20 times it will delete the first 19 emails and your left with only the most recent response.

  26. Ann*

    This might not be exactly what you’re looking for, but the book A World Without Email by Cal Newport was pretty revolutionary for me.

    1. Random*

      Came here to +1 this!

      I also use “work offline” mode at least once a day for an hour or so to process and work on whatever is sitting there. It is too easy for an incoming e-mail to break the concentration and priority list.

    2. ampersand*

      This book looks really good–I’m adding it to my to be read list! Just curious, did it do anything to change how you’re able to approach work/email?

      My first thought when reading this letter was that the question shouldn’t be “how do I stay on top of my email?” but instead “how do I get this to stop?!” I realize that’s not helpful for the LW, however, and most of us can’t just demand that the emails stop. But I’ve also been in LW’s place and had to quit trying to stay on top of email because it wasn’t sustainable (I resigned from that job; my inbox was a deciding factor).

      1. Ann*

        The second half of the book is all about changes that can be made to address the problem of too many emails. Very practical! Some of the suggestions would need to be implemented at a larger scale but there’s a lot that even one individual can do. It absolutely affected my approach.

    3. OP with the wild inbox*

      Thanks I’ll get a copy of this to go through in quiet season in a few months!

    4. Sophia*

      I love this book ! And everything Cal writes. However, I really dislike the title. Even he does not suggest the world would be better with no email. Email is so handy for review of documents and other things. Think about mailing and faxing things in!! I think it is better to reduce your email to a manageable level and to not spend a lot of time on your email. I do this by leaving my email closed for a lot of the day. I also use a folder called “Archive Inbox” where i move everything once i am done with it so it does not clutter my inbox. I also limit who I cc on emails and other people also pick up on that so they do not cc me on things. Also im famous at my work for my “Call and Email Window” for a specific period of time (usually after lunch) i email and call people back. Otherwise, it is pretty difficult to get a hold of me unless you legit come by office and interrupt me. Reduce your email to the extent possible!!!

  27. Peanut Hamper*

    This is more cultural than anything, but can you encourage people to put BLUF (bottom line up front) as the subject, along with a due date if applicable? Then you can sort emails without having to open them up and you can see at a glance which things are more pressing than others.

    1. Caramel & Cheddar*

      I used to work somewhere that had a list of suggestions for suject lines that always had an “action” plus subject line, e.g. “FOR REVIEW: new llama grooming procedures” or “ACTION REQUIRED: feedback on new chocolate teapot recipe.” People were… okay at using them. But my experience is that people are generally pretty universally bad at writing subject lines in general no matter how much coaching they receive.

      1. Peanut Hamper*

        Yeah, it is definitely cultural.

        But it’s not enough to coach. You have to instruct and require. The military does this with email and it works great.

    2. ursula*

      Yeah, in busy periods I encourage my team to flag in the subject line if something is urgent, or requires a quick response, or is just FYI, to help me sort through things quickly. This only really works when the email is only addressed to me, and it doesn’t work for external communications, but it has been extremely helpful in reducing the extent to which I am holding up the team’s work as a result of inbox mess. (It’s not ideal, of course – ideally I would be on top of everything all the time. But in this reality, it’s helping everybody get more of what they need.)

    3. Healthcare Manager*

      I love this! I also suggest adding
      ‘Approval please’ / ‘info only’ / ‘feedback welcome’ etc at the beginning of the subject line & deadline at the end. Really helps when emailing busy ppl (that you know can’t read every email) understand in an instant what you want from emailing them (especially in a ‘CC for info’ heavy culture).

  28. Guacamole Bob*

    How many of those 150 daily emails are things that you need to read thoughtfully or act on? I probably get that many in a middle management kind of role, but there are a lot that I can quickly file or archive without spending more than a few seconds on – industry mailing lists, daily automated reports, internal newsletters, etc. I deal with that stuff quickly as it comes in and narrow it down to the stuff I actually need to think about. Also moving items quickly out of my inbox by updating my calendar, scheduling a meeting, adding a to-do list item (I use OneNote), adding an Outlook reminder, or otherwise capturing the relevant info elsewhere.

    One thing that’s helped me is Alison’s tip about a “waiting for” folder (I call mine Pending), where I put anything I might need to follow up on later but that doesn’t need current action: https://www.askamanager.org/2015/02/you-need-a-waiting-for-folder.html

    Also, your folders don’t need to be static! I sometimes create a folder for something I know will generate a lot of traffic I may need to refer to over a couple of weeks, then move the whole folder somewhere else when that project or discussion is concluded.

    Over the last couple of years as I’ve moved into middle management, I’ve also gotten better at learning how to triage email and decide when I first read it whether it needs thought or response from me or whether I’m just cc’d for awareness (I’m in a big bureaucracy and a lot of stuff gets sent to a long list of people). The emails where you aren’t sure what you’re supposed to do about the thing are the hardest, and just deciding more quickly whether you need to review the attachment, delegate an action, write a thoughtful follow up, just skim and file, etc. saves time.

    1. Scarlett*

      *Unsubscribe*

      I unsubscribe from pretty much everything bc I get overwhelmed by email volume and I feel guilty not reading the newsletters or whatever (a small handful of relevant newsletters I WILL read are filtered into their own folder). Does this mean I may miss that sale for the product I use? Yeah, probably. But it’s been exceptional for my mental health to just *let it go*

      I also do this for all marketers (sorry marketers, I know it’s thankless and I should tell you I’m not interested….) But for the sake of my mental health I just delete the email as soon as it hits my box, or mark as spam if I keep getting emails and can’t unsubscribe

  29. Princess Pumpkin Spice*

    I see people suggesting rules, but that never worked for me. I tend to forget about emails I don’t immediately see.

    Take an hour first thing in the morning (block it on your calendar in Outlook) and sort through your emails. I use 3 folders – NOW (these need to be handled with some urgency), SOON (these should be done within 24 hours), and LATER (these are not pressing, and can wait 48-36 hours to handle). Depending on the flow of your emails (is it mostly in the morning, or a constant stream throughout the day?) maybe set aside another hour right after lunch to resort the new and touch anything waiting.

    Something I also like to do is answer any easy emails immediately, so they aren’t on my to-do list. These tend to be close-ended requests, with short concrete answers that shouldn’t generate more than a thanks in response. Taking care of these makes me feel accomplished, even if it is only a check on a long list.

    1. Dawn*

      Not everyone, but a lot of the time when people mention rules, they’re referring specifically to emails they don’t ever (probably) need to see.

      When I was in a certain role at my last organization, I was (for better or for worse) placed on the distribution list for every one of our regional newsletters. None of them were very much different, and honestly, none of them contained anything useful to me that I wasn’t already aware of. But just in case, rather than discard them immediately, I set a filter to: mark them as read, archive them in a ‘Newsletters’ folder, and then delete them after 30 days had passed.

      Rules shine the most where you’re getting a lot of emails that you never actually have to read, but which are cluttering up your inbox and making it … both harder to sort the wheat from the chaff, and very intimidating when you sit down in the morning. And “emails I never actually need to see unless something has gone very wrong” are super common (if not universal) once you reach a certain level.

      1. Arrietty*

        I have three different inboxes (personal and two business ones) and my personal inbox also gets business-related emails for a different business. Rules help me to redirect things that I will want to read but not necessarily now (like newsletters from business coaches, which are interesting and often useful but never urgent) from things that I need to respond to immediately *as long as I’m actually working*, versus personal emails.

        I feel like the little bold number telling me there’s a new email is yelling at me, but equally I can’t prioritise two businesses and my personal life all at once, so siloing the purposes into separate sections helps.

    2. Nightengale*

      your outlook may vary (or maybe you aren’t in Outlook) but I still get the little blue number next to folders of e-mails that have been ruled. I visually scan down the folders and can immediately see which ones have e-mails. One folder has the name of my office manager and I read her stuff immediately. One is for messages sent to the whole hospital system and I read those at my leisure. But the blue 1 sits outside that folder until I do.

  30. Audrey Puffins*

    I triage and I colour-code. Yes, I have rules as well. But when I come in to 150 emails in the morning, I start with the oldest one and scroll through them as quickly as possible; I delete out-of-office notifications and sales stuff; I then use the coloured categories for different types of emails. Emails with attachments I need to save down? Yellow. Emails that are more for reference than requiring a response? Orange. Emails that need to be bounced off someone else? Purple, and so on and so forth. By categorising them, and having my inbox sorted by Categories rather than anything else, I have similar emails all together, so when I go back to the beginning, I can deal with them en masse. I find it easier to do all my file-saving at once followed by all my “can you assist?” forwarding at once, rather than skipping from one type of email to another willynilly and having to reset my brain every time.

    1. Arrietty*

      Your mention of out of office emails reminded me that a former office required us all to email everyone else when we started and finished work every day, once we moved to WFH due to covid. I’d say I remembered to do this about 5% of the time and nothing ever happened. I set a rule to mark as read and delete those within the first week.

  31. cactus lady*

    Hahahaha I currently have 20,000 items in my inbox. Set it to group emails by conversations, and then get used to searching!

    2. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

      I genuinely cannot fathom how this works. Outlook’s search function is really a crap shoot at times, so it’s sometimes easier for me to just look in a particular folder. For example, yesterday, I had to prove to someone at a company that they had received the same info SEVEN times, but that info was spread across 3 years and 4 different email addresses (company had been bought, email addresses changed, personnel changes).

  32. Snoozy_snek*

    I haven’t seen anyone mention the snooze function! It’s a life saver, and doesn’t require you to try and set up rules upfront.

    I go through and scan emails. For each one, I determine “I need to address this in the next hour” or by EOD, by tomorrow, by next week etc etc, then snooze appropriately so that eventually my inbox is only urgent, immediate tasks. Then I can treat it like a TODO list.

    General non urgent requests for information can be snoozed for later in the week. Training reminders not due until next month can be snoozed for weeks, something you want to address today can be snoozed to the next time you’re free from meetings. This really cuts down on the overwhelm.

    This is better for me than trying to mess with rules. Rules require so much upfront overhead. it requires you to come up with categories, prioritize categories, worry about if something important gets siphoned off to a folder, set up all the logic, fix it if you organized it wrong and you realize you missed something, and so on.

    1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      A lot of versions of desktop Outlook don’t have the feature to set a snooze, but it is available in the Outlook Web Access version, and it will still work (including having the “snoozed” folder in your folders list) in the desktop version even if you cannot set a snooze. (I keep OWA pinned to my task bar JUST for the purpose of snoozing, I hate it otherwise.)

    2. SnoozeConvert*

      Just giving a +1 to the Snooze feature! In covid my clinic made us switch to the web access, which was a struggle. but the Snooze option made it worth it. Honestly was life changing as a Former Folder Filer ™️. I’m down to 3 folders now

    3. Pauli*

      This is the system I use too. Certain types of emails get snoozed for certain times of day – for example:

      – Anything that’s a order shipping status update I snooze to 3pm, and I do all those checks at once.
      – Anything I need to follow up with Europe about gets snoozed to first thing the next morning so I can catch them while our work days overlap.
      – Ongoing projects I just need to keep an eye on get snoozed to a quieter time on Fridays.

      Then anything that doesn’t need a reply gets archived or deleted immediately.

  33. Hawk*

    To add to the suggestion of rules/filters, I have a few suggestions of things that specifically work for me (I will also add that I am AuDHD, so your mileage may vary):
    – When creating a filter/rule, I almost always use the “from” category to filter out emails from specific groups that are the lowest importance, ones I can skip if I need to. They’re automatically marked as read or put in a low-stakes folder.
    – Tied to that, when I had a shared inbox that sent high-priority items to my email, those were filtered (using the “from” filter/rule, too) to the very top and copied to a duplicate folder. Sometimes I just kept the duplicate folder out (in 365, as “favorites”) and checked it daily.
    – IT tickets are copied into an IT folder, so if I accidentally delete the main one, the copy is still there, but as I work in a public facility where I need to keep an eye on them but it’s low priority.
    – The Office 365 “pin” function helps me pin my to-reply/to-do emails to the top, and I also currently run a rule that pins all emails that mention trainings as I’m behind a number of hours for my certification. I have to clean this up once a month, but it also forces me to go back over things I may have forgotten.
    – Emails that were sent to me because I am on a list (many in my organization) that are not high priority are filtered into separate folders based on the list. I need to refine this a bit.

  34. DivergentStitches*

    I’m a big fan of the To-Do Task Pane in Outlook. You can drag an email to it to flag it for follow-up, assign different flags, different due dates, etc.

      1. Random*

        Yup this, Basically any email in Inbox is either tasked or deleted. Nothing stays in inbox after this decision.

    2. Troubadour*

      Came here to say that – Tasks is currently a key part of my email management strategy. (I cycle through strategies so don’t know how long it will remain effective for me personally but at the moment it’s useful.) So I:

      1) have rules to filter out the mailing list guff etc that I can catch up with later when things are quiet
      2) do the quick triage of a) delete, b) read-and-file, c) quick response, d) this is going to take some time so it becomes a task

      No matter how much I think I’m sticking to this, stuff still somehow accumulates in the inbox, so periodically when things are slightly quieter I’ll take some time to go through and clear them out. Key here is to start at the *oldest* – it’s always way easier to delete old stuff because it’s generally either been solved or clearly doesn’t matter that much, whereas new stuff you’re often still waiting on info to proceed.

      The downside of using Tasks is then you have to manage your task list. I always start by setting a couple of things as to-do today, a couple of things tomorrow, etc – but when life gets busy and you can’t keep up, in very short order everything’s accumulated under “Today” again. So I’m trialing using “no date” as a “nice to do if time ever allows”, actual dates for when there’s an actual hard deadline, and adding a date of next year or something for when it has to be done but no specific date.

      1. LC*

        It’s old school, but I like to print my task list every few days and use the good old highlighter for priorities and number tasks and tick them off

        It doubles up with electronic but having it front and centre on my desk works so well

        Alternatively. Block out 15 mins at the end of every day to write a post it of the top 3 priorities for the next day. There can only be 3 and it’s tough but the process is important!

  35. Workaholic*

    OMG! Email. Once upon a time I was doing pretty good. Then I tried restoring one email from the permanently deleted part, and it somehow restored EVERY ONE back to my inbox. I’ll never do that again haha. But also I get hundreds of emails a day too. PTO is awful; I swear it takes a week to catch up on email after being out just one day. (Aaaand now that I’m thinking about email rules I just remembered something I need to tell coworkers about.)

    Now I forgot the original direction of my post! But I’m going to gleefully be reading all the responses because I need help too.

    Now off to do the bad thing of logging onto work computer to message coworkers on my PTO day lol.

  36. HailRobonia*

    For those of you using Outlook: I recently was assigned an updated computer at work and the new Office suite kept prompting me to try out the “New Outlook” (which is evidently still in beta).

    In the words of General Akbar: IT’S A TRAP! I switched to the new version thinking it was expected of us, and the interface was terrible. They added on all sorts of useless bells & whistles and seem to have gone all in on AI assistance… which could be fine but really just seemed to be the Ghost of Clippy. Among other things it would randomly turn words into emoji and it took me forever to figure out where to turn that off. Moreover the interface wasted a lot of screenspace and all my folders were put in alphabetic order. Sorry Outlook, just because I have a folder called “Account information” doesn’t mean I want that at the top of my list.

    1. Dawn*

      I am getting so very tired of “use our new AI assistant!” in every damned program.

      It’s one of the big drivers behind me largely moving away from the big tech corporations; tonight’s challenge is to back up all of my files and install Linux as my primary operating system on my main PC.

    2. Mutually supportive*

      why do they make all the new interfaces be so inefficient for screen space? I tried new outlook last week and switched it off again because you can’t scan over the emails like I could before.
      Sadly, turning it on and off again was enough for it to screw up some of my standard settings, dammit!
      I think New outlook is going to become mandatory at some point soon. A sad day :(

        1. Dawn*

          On reflection, surprised that this article didn’t include Thunderbird, but it’s probably the most popular open-source email client.

    3. OP with the wild inbox*

      I totally agree, for the update and did NOT have capacity to learn how it worked while actually, you know, working. might try again in off season, surely it must have some improvement??

      1. Dawn*

        Microsoft thinks it looks prettier and like every other tech giant out there, they’re desperate to force “AI” down your throat.

        Also “improvements” give them the excuse to keep charging people for the “service”.

        That’s about it.

  37. Jenna Webster*

    I also try to handle emails completely when I open them, insofar as that is possible, and then add any follow-up needed to my task list with a note as to where that information is filed. I also use rules to put things in folders, but I have to be sure those folders are at the top of my list of folders, since there are items in there that are actionable and they haven’t been read.

  38. EventS*

    I took a professional development class for this with Randy Dean and it helped me a lot. He has a lot of videos on his YouTube channel. My biggest takeaways were:
    1. If an email takes <5 minutes, respond immediately
    2. Use "categories" to label your emails when they come in and set time aside to read and respond. I find it easier than the "high importance" flag especially when coming back from an out-of-office.
    3. Use folders for projects or people, it makes it a lot easier to find something later on

    1. Tegan Jovanka*

      +1 to the suggestion of responding immediately if it’s going to take less than five minutes. Somewhere along the way I read about that as a means of avoiding procrastination for tasks in general (which I tend to do unless I act while I’m thinking about it). I also file email in folders immediately once I’ve read/responded to it.

      Also – see if you can unsubscribe from stuff that you don’t truly need. Some systems will also let you set the frequency of recurring emails e.g. as a daily or weekly digest instead of one at a time.

      I find rules most useful for me personally for filtering things I might want but aren’t immediate (newsletters, for example) but otherwise I tend to lose track if I have to check multiple folders for email, so I don’t use them.

  39. nom de beurre*

    The number of people suggesting rules is fascinating to me, only because I’m a zero-inbox person who also has a 150+-email-a-day job (a kind of job that, in my opinion, shouldn’t exist) and I’ve never used rules.

    What I do: When I get in in the morning, I just… read every email, starting from the bottom. I flag the ones that need action or a response from me, but I don’t actually answer anything until I’ve read them all. Lots of them, I can glance at and immediately recognize that I’m just cc’d and can ignore this (which is a cultural norm at my company that I don’t agree with, but OK). Then I answer the urgent or easy-to-deal-with emails right away, and then throughout the rest of the day, I prioritize the other flagged emails based on how time-consuming they are, how important they are, and what else comes in.

    I don’t check emails during blocks of time that are reserved for work (which are much fewer and shorter than I’d like them to be), or while in meetings, but the rest of the time, I read and either ignore / respond to / flag every single email that comes in, so by the end of the workday, I have no unread emails. I have plenty of *unanswered* emails, but those are flagged and I’ll get to them when I get to them.

    I do use color-coded tags for a select few things, but I don’t filter my work email into folders.

    Anyway. It’s just one method, but it works for me. But what it really boils down to is that I just read all my email right away.

    1. Dawn*

      I don’t wish this to come off as offensive, I assure you that it’s not intended to, but I think that most of us simply don’t have time to read all 150+ of our emails, especially once one is in middle+ management. My time has bigger priorities, especially when a lot of it is just extraneous to the work I’m actually doing, unless something goes very wrong.

      1. Guacamole Bob*

        I don’t know about this – I get a lot of email and I also just… read it? For most people, >50% of email needs no more than a brief skim before being filed or deleted, and some doesn’t need to be read at all.

        10 seconds per message at 150 messages adds up to less than half an hour per day. Actually dealing with the content of all the messages is a different story, but I think it’s pretty reasonable to expect managers with that level of email traffic to be able to triage reasonably effectively and to know what’s in their inbox even if they sometimes get behind on really dealing with the substantive messages.

        1. Dawn*

          Ok, but I think that if the correct answer to the OP’s problem were “just read it all,” they’d probably have already considered that, considering that it’s an extremely obvious solution if it’s a workable one.

  40. pally*

    Some minor suggestions:

    Ask the regular senders to use meaningful subject lines. And be consistent too. I have one sender who uses “misc.” as the subject for every single email sent to me -even though each email pertains to a different topic. It is maddening! This helps when reviewing them and later on when you need to find/categorize things.

    Ask the regular senders to use the high importance alert only when there is something that is time sensitive and truly needs your immediate attention. You’ll have to clarify what those conditions are – so that this does not get abused.

    1. TammyTheSnake*

      I always edit the subject line when I reply to something like that: “misc” becomes “City of Townsville RFP (WAS: misc)”. Modelling the correct behavior for your correspondent may or may not teach them, but it WILL help you if you need to search for that conversation later.

    2. AccidentalAccademic*

      Re: Meaningful Subject lines, I had a manager who received hundreds of emails a day. We devised a system of starting the subject with “instructions” — response required, for information, immediate action. Made it a lot easier for him to triage his emails. It wasn’t a perfect system, but worked well about 80% of the time.

  41. nerak*

    I personally don’t like “rules” because as others have said, it means checking those folders at some point anyway. I spend a block of time in the morning and a block of time at the end of my day to clean up my inbox (15-20 minutes each), but I try to keep it organized as I go along.

    I use A LOT of folders and once an email has been answered/resolved, it goes into its respective folder. If it’s just a need-to-know, even better, no answer required, just file it away. If an email is still in my main inbox, it means I’m not finished with it yet, and I also use flags to keep track of things I need to answer/follow up with that day (and if not that day, at some point).

    I like the color coding/categorizing suggestions as well, but for me, I think blocking off shorter chunks of time to keep it organized overall might be helpful. I’m also a huge fan of permanently deleting emails that genuinely to not pertain to me.

  42. djdfjfds=*

    I’ve had the same email management system for years :
    – I open any email I get at the earliest (could be when I get it, or you can plan email opening slots)
    – I scan the email, and then do 3 possible actions :
    1) I can answer it in less than a minute > I do it
    2) I have to answer or treat, but I can’t do in it less than a minute > I put it in a folder called To do (you can also have subfolders with different types of To dos)
    3) I don’t have to do anything : it immediately is either filed in a relevant folder or deleted (spam).

    To answer email quickly, also consider having Hello and your signature already created : it helps not to have to type Kind regards and please don’t hesitate to contact me 30 times a day.

  43. Ashley*

    Snooze emails that require follow-ups but you are waiting on other people.
    I also have a newsletter / marketing email for things I want to read about but it doesn’t need to happen now.
    Unsubscribe to things that you don’t actually need. The marketing emails are sometimes relevant but taking a few minutes to get off of mailing lists can be incredibly helpful. (You could always do a quick folder for these and then when you are left on hold or need a brain break go through and click and follow through on the unsubscribe.)
    At a certain point have a conversation about what people copy you in on and when you can leave the conversation.
    My goal is to keep my inbox to things I need to address today and let pop ups for things to go through tomorrow, next week, etc. so it is about strategies for quick sorting more then anything.

  44. Adereterial@gmail.com*

    I can get upwards of 200 emails a day… a mix of things, but I can get overwhelming.

    Filtering into folders isn’t helpful for me – I just end up missing stuff. What I use is conditional formatting – emails from certain people are shown in a different colour to the standard, as they’re likely to be things I need to do ASAP. Emails from my boss are purple, my director in red, for example. I can then quickly scan for those first, deal with anything there, and then move on to the rest. I also find it helpful – especially if I’ve been out for a while – to sort by subject so I can work through each thread rather than email by email.

  45. HowIMetYourAunt*

    I set up a system where I have several folders with different urgency levels. When something comes in my inbox, if it takes less than 3-5 minutes to respond, I do that immediately so it’s off my plate. If it’s going to take more than that, I file it into an “Action Needed” folder and leave it as unread. Then during my scheduled focus times, I go through that folder and try to clear stuff out. You could probably create some folders that have to do with specific topics/teams and file the “FYI” emails in there and catch up on them as time allows. The goal is to end the day with an empty inbox.
    Using automation rules like other have suggested to get those mundane company announcements filed away immediately also greatly helps.
    Additionally, I have gone through times where I just periodically close out my Outlook app and check it a few times during the day. Having it constantly open and receiving notifications every couple minutes when a new email in was too distracting when trying to focus on something important.

  46. Persephone Mulberry*

    I have ADHD and stuff that needs my attention has to STAY in my inbox until addressed, because out of sight, out of mind. So my inbox is effectively my running to-do list.

    My company uses Outlook, so I rely heavily on Categories. First thing when I open my email in the morning, I take a first pass at everything that has come in overnight (usually between 30 and 50) and either file in the appropriate folder if it doesn’t need action, or assign to a category if it does. I have my inbox set to sort by Categories so like is grouped with like, and then after every email has a home, I work through them one category at a time. Once an email has been sufficiently actioned, I send it off to the appropriate folder. New emails that come in throughout the day get the same treatment – unless it’s drop-everything urgent or will take less than 30 seconds (e.g. print an attachment), it gets categorized and addressed the next time I circle back to that category.

  47. Charlotte Lucas*

    Rules are great, but I also just delete things right away if I don’t need to keep them for any reason. I set things I do need to take care of to Unread (really helpful on busy days or the end of the day, so I know what to prioritize in the morning). I also set my inbox to show most recent emails first. You avoid having to read every email in a chain sometimes – and get the information you need first.

    If there’s a shared inbox for anything in your department, make sure you encourage people to send to that. Not only will it help with your inbox, but it means emails get into the right hands faster. (I worked on a team that used one for requests, and it increased efficiency so much!)

    Due to my role, I get a lot of emails. I at least scan them all, but I am also a ridiculously fast reader, so YMMV on that.

    1. EngineeringFun*

      I would also just suggest not answering emails. You can scan them and then delete. I got to a point like this a year ago. If people need an answer, they will find you! Mind you at was so burnt out and left the company within six months! You just can’t keep that pace up!

  48. Palliser*

    I’m a VP and in the same boat. For me my many emails are a sign that I really do have too much on my plate, but something that has helped a bit is creating separate email addresses for particular topics. So, for example, if you’re collecting RSVPs, you could have an in-box for RSVPS@event.net that you direct people to, and check it at particular times of days. Ideally you’d have someone (an intern?) dealing with the lower level stuff, but even if it has to be you, you can forward emails to the relevant in-box as opposed to it clogging your main in-box. I also have 9 millon folders, but I usually use those for record-keeping rather than managing open tasks. Good luck!

  49. leslie nope*

    To avoid repeating what everyone else has said, I’d say the “tasks” feature of gmail is wildly underrated for tagging action items for follow-up as you’re sifting through email.

  50. NMitford*

    I had one job where everyone got tons of emails. One of the things that we did was implement rules that email subject lines had to be standardized and start with specific titles, so that people could quickly and easily see what the email was about. For example, I worked in proposals, so our emails to company subject matter experts had to start with “RFP” which let folks triage them.

    1. Caramel & Cheddar*

      My last job had something similar, but with stuff like “FOR REVIEW” or “FYI” or “ACTION REQUIRED” etc. It was helpful to be able to see at a glance what you needed to prioritize.

      We also had a culture where you could send full (short!) emails in the subject line, e.g. “FYI: Jane approved the new process EOM” (End of Message). We did have Google chat available to us, so I guess the point of those short emails was they could go to lots of people you may not otherwise want to have a group chat with.

  51. Caramel & Cheddar*

    I get less email than I used to in previous jobs, but one of the things that has helped me is to re-assess my relationship to email. I think like a lot of people, I used to work in an environment where you wanted to have backup on *everything* so you could CYA. That’s… not actually a really healthy way to work, even if it’s practical for your work environment!

    So what I’ve started doing now is ask myself: will this email matter tomorrow? a month from now? a year from now? And then I file accordingly, or just delete outright. I don’t need to keep every email in a chain. I don’t need to keep the “hey, where’s the Whatchamacallit file?” email.

    For my work, I have a folder called “Decisions” where if I’ve come to a consensus with someone else or another team on a way forward about a task/process, I’ll save that email in case it ever comes back to haunt me. But I don’t need to save every single email about that decision, or emails about the process/task that stem from the decision, etc.

    At the end of the day, the CYA method of archiving rarely feels worth it to me. Okay, so I was right about X and have the email to prove it. Do I work somewhere that this matters? If I was right and Fergus was wrong, will I get an apology? Will something we were doing meaningfully change as a result of me being right? Will not having the backup result in negative consequences for me? If the answers to those questions is No, then I don’t see the point in keeping thousands of emails filed away for the future.

  52. Susan Calvin*

    This might be controversial, but one very senior technical specialist I used to work with had a separate folder where everything went he was cc’d on, and gave himself permission to not touch those unless otherwise triggered. He had correctly deduced that most people would cc him on lots of stuff “just in case” (and sometimes to borrow authority in customer communications), and absolutely nothing crucial was missed by not reading All That.

    If you actually needed him to do something? Put him in the To field, and make sure the question/action item is crystal clear from the text. Situation is gradually heating up? Drop him an IM that you need his advice, and to check the email from [date] for context/history.

    He was still swamped, but had a pretty good response time on stuff that mattered.

  53. Cat Tree*

    You can set automatic formatting. I have one format (slightly larger font and a color) for when I’m in the “to” field, another when I’m in the “cc” field, and a third when I’m included as part of a mailing list. I’m also ruthless with anything remotely spam-like. If I can’t unsubscribe, I create a rule to send directly to the deleted items folder.

  54. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

    Outlook corrupted several VMs before I started using the web interface.

    I got an email every time a ticket I was assigned was updated–including its priority passively when a new, unrelated ticket was created. A single event might trigger upwards of 8 updates. I ended up on mailing lists that got email notifications every time a client uploaded a file, downloaded proofs, approved a job, or contacted customer service (Yes, no one needs to know of all those occasions, but as I filled different roles on different teams, I ended up on all of them). Due to some low-performing peers, several other departments established SOP of emailing entire teams instead of individuals (in the hopes that any attempted pushback would trigger bullying and mob counter-pushback, which it often did). Then, lest we ignore them, the peers who would email all.employees@dysfunctional.masterpiece.theatre no matter to whom they intended to correspond.

    I finally resorted to creating a list that was essentially the chain of command above me and anyone else who could effectively yank my professional chain and created a rule that routed every email I received where I did not appear in the To:, CC:, or BCC: fields and the sender did not appear on that list to Junk and declared that we’d polluted the email system to the point where it no longer could be called “communication.”

    I had peers in similar boats who weren’t as brazen who literally could spend 8 hours just “checking email” and still not get through everything.

    From https://www.askamanager.org/2024/08/my-employee-ccs-me-on-too-many-emails.html.

  55. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    I would suggest 2 things
    1) triage between informational, must do sometime, must do now.
    2) timeboxing – look at everything that came in overnight, triage, then start working. Don’t look at new emails until noon. Then triage all of those. This helps keep your mental flow going.

    Also – for the things that require your actions. It’s more efficient mentally to do all the quick things in a bundle (pro forma approvals of expense reports & timecards), and then do the things that require some thinking.

    The long-term solution, which I think is out of scope of your question, is to stop using email for everything. A project planning tool that tracks status & action items, dedicated financial management system with workflow for approving invoices & POs, etc.

  56. PBJ*

    Do
    Delegate
    Delete (archive/ignore)
    Defer

    I use minimal folders – one for each direct report where I put anything in there that I need to follow up with them at our next meeting. Everything gets moved to the archive once dealt with.

    Unsubscribe from any newsletters you haven’t read in a few months. You don’t need them.

    I have the Outlook app on my phone and I have Cortana read me my email whilst I go for a walk. I find the movement and fresh air helps me make quick decisions. I can use Cortana to writes replies.

  57. LibraryIT*

    I love filtering and folders, but as others have identified, things can get lost. I think a good strategy for filtering is to filter out anything that never needs action – any marketing email, newsletter, teams notice, etc. is an automatic filter. And then what about using flags instead of folders for other stuff? If you feel like stuff gets lost in folders, flags can keep the email front and center, but still organized.
    Can you set up for your inbox to automatically create a to-do list item? I know Microsoft has some tools that allow you to do that. It might seem a little less overwhelming if you see it as a straight list, rather than an inbox. If I’m back from time away and have an overwhelming amount of emails, I like to just scan them and create a to do list (sometimes I’ll even print out the first page of the emails so I can better organize them).
    I also agree with the tip about using conversation view – if you have a lot of email threads it is a lot less overwhelming to see 1 email with 10 replies rather than 11 individual emails.

    I don’t know of any trainings, but I think you have to figure out what ways your brain works and what makes it less overwhelming. For example, I HATE having unread messages. So first thing in the morning, I click through all my emails – this allows me to get a sense of what I need to do, but it also marks them all as read. As I click through all of them, I filter what I can. I leave anything that needs “an answer” – whether that is a reply or work done – in my inbox. I then filter out everything else into folders. If there is an email with three additional replies – all but the latest email gets put into a folder. I’m sure a lot of people would find that extremely chaotic or overwhelming, but for me, I like having the organization of the folders, but seeing all my emails as a visual to do list.
    I also glance at/mark as read/filter emails as they come in. So I’m bouncing around a lot, but my brain allows for a lot of quick task switching and I’m able to get right back to what I was working on before (I know a lot of people find this very challenging, so it isn’t a tip so much as just something that works for me).
    Good luck! Email is a blessing (fewer phone calls! everything documented!) and a curse.

  58. Yet Another Librarian*

    If you use Outlook, Total Workday Control by Michael Linenberger has been incredibly helpful for me! I think I actually saw it mentioned in comments here at some point, and it’s revolutionized how I manage my inbox. Works best with Outlook client (not web access) on desktop so may not be a great fit for everyone, though.

  59. hugseverycat*

    This isn’t for everyone, but it works for me.

    I don’t like automatic filters, because inevitably something important gets filtered out of my view and I drop a ball.

    I also don’t like using lots of folders. I inevitably end up spending more time trying to categorize my emails than I spend taking real action on them.

    So I have exactly 3 folders: Save, Don’t Save, and Feel Good.

    Save is for emails I might need to look at later. This would be anything sent directly to me, anything I need to take action on, anything that has important info, etc. Don’t Save is for stuff I’ll never need to see again. Like alerts, notifications, digests, etc. Feel Good is for when people send me compliments or if I get recognized in some way that I might want to look at later when writing a resume or feeling sad.

    So if an email is in my inbox, that means I need to take action on it. As soon as I’m done with the email, I filter it away to one of my 3 folders.

    I also turn off the thing that marks emails as read as soon as I look at them. So sometimes I’ll keep an email that is “read” in my inbox as a way of signalling that I don’t need to take action on this email, but I do need to check in on it. Like maybe I’ve sent a reply and I might need to follow up on this email later.

  61. Jen M-G*

    I just revamped my entire email system last month after watching a webinar (by Lindsay O’Neill). I now move everything out of my inbox to one of a few categories: 1) Action — for emails I need to do something about; 2) Waiting — for emails I’m waiting for a response on; 3) Reference — for info I may need to refer back to regularly; 4) Archive — for items I’m done with. It makes searching for old emails much easier, and keeps me from getting overwhelmed when I open my email.

  62. LovelyTresses*

    Candidly, I can’t use Rules because there’s too many variations of emails and I never ended up checking the folders I was filtering in to. I’ll share what’s worked for me, receiver of probably 200 emails a day during my busy period: there is a time of day that I am ON! I’m awake, alert and really productive (it’s inexplicably from 3:00PM – 6:00PM). So once a day, smack dab in the middle of my most productive hours (for me, it’s from 4:00-5:00), I tackle my inbox. I click on the “Unread” filter, so the emails in that thread are the unread ones. And my goal is to get my eyes on every unread email and decide when I’m going to deal with it. First, I do a quick search for the sender of the daily newsletters I get and mark them as read. I love to reading my local paper’s daily newsletter during my not-busy times, but during my busy season, I just can’t. I also do a quick search of my unreads and mark any emails read that are serving as notifications (Asana, Slack etc.) from other project management spaces. Then I’m left with my actual emails. I read every unread email and use the flags in Outlook and decide if I need to answer them “today, tomorrow, this week or next week”. Once I have zero unread emails, I sort my inbox to show the emails I need to answer “today” and answer those. If I haven’t used up my hour, I will sometimes jump to “tomorrow’s” emails, but that’s not always necessary. Last, I’ve ruthlessly unsubscribed from email lists that I’m on, which has been super helpful for my inbox.

  64. Ally McBeal*

    This isn’t novel by any means, but I keep everything in my inbox until my role in the task has been completed, and then I file it to an appropriate subfolder. Sometimes I know the task is fully on me to complete (in which case I also mark the email as unread or color-code it in some way), or sometimes all I have to do is make sure someone else replies with the info I need, but nothing gets filed until I know it’s been managed.

    In previous roles where I got a lot of automated emails that don’t require any direct action, I set up rules to have them auto-filed to the right folder, and I might scan thru that folder a couple days a week to make sure I haven’t missed anything important.

    But beyond that I don’t have a lot of rules. I receive around 75-100 emails a day on average, and I currently have 21 messages in my inbox, with the oldest from July 11 (and I should be able to complete and file that one either today or early next week).

    I guess I should also mention that I keep my to-do lists in other places, like Excel spreadsheets for multifaceted projects or a notebook for quick one-off tasks. I could probably be using Outlook more in this regard but frankly I don’t love Outlook so I’d rather not invest even more time there. And please don’t ask me about my personal email, which I tend to forget exists except for once a week.

  65. StressedButOkay*

    My company requires us to keep all emails (non-junk ones etc) for 5-7 years. To keep this manageable, I have one folder that everything goes into once I’ve dealt with it with a category label.

    Before I get there, I have a few things I do:

    1) Turn on nesting so that all conversations in one email chain, including my sent emails, are in one nested thread – saved. my. sanity.
    2) Sort every morning, and sometimes afternoon, by sender because this lets me quickly find and delete junk emails. This allows me to focus on what’s left and I can deal with the actual emails so much faster.

  66. badger*

    Rules never worked for me – I just didn’t get enough repetitive things I could file away without reading them to check if they were different for it to make an impact.

    One thing that did really help me was the flag/to do list function. Morning skim of everything, flag everything that actually needs me to action it or read it again and take it all in, and then just use the to do list to look at just those. Made it much less overwhelming!

    1. WellRed*

      I’m still overwhelmed but I do this, too. Creating rules doesn’t work in a lot of cases and the majority of my emails come from varied, outside sources, not my team.

  67. NoIceCavesHere*

    I’m super lucky my office uses Gmail. I set up filters to apply labels. Then when I check my email, I’m able to prioritize what comes in my inbox based on whether it has no label, just one label, or a bunch of labels. If I can reply quickly (like a simple “Thanks!” or “I’ll get to that today”) I do that immediately. If I need to come back to an email later, I mark it with a star and check my starred category at least once a day. If I really need to reply and need some time to think about it first, I’ll start the reply just so that it shows up as a draft I know I’ll need to finish. I also turned off Gmail’s “importance” flag since it marked everything as important and was just visual clutter. The filters and labels I apply are:

    1. People – I have filters and labels for email from my direct reports, my management chain, and my department’s leadership. Their emails are always relevant and I respond to them before anything else.
    2. Projects – I create a filter for every new project I’m assigned with all the keywords, distribution lists, and/or senders that are applicable. I don’t delete the filters and labels for old projects, so I can easily screen out those emails you get in perpetuity after you leave a team. This lets me ID emails from my current, active projects easily.
    3. Automated emails – I have a filter for the big categories of automated emails I get – Google calendar notifications, academic journal notifications, spam from our internal business systems. This makes them easy to look at if I want to, and importantly, to delete in bulk if I’m not going to get to them.
    4. Things I sent – I automatically label anything I send so even otherwise unlabeled conversations get saved if it was relevant enough for me to reply to. It also saves my sent mail for longer than our email janitor would otherwise allow.

    None of these filters remove the emails from my inbox so I don’t accidentally delete or move anything. When I want to clean out my inbox I first review all the labeled email, and then can mostly bulk-delete the email that doesn’t have any labels. The occasional review of the unlabeled email is still important since some important emails come through without any keywords, but I’ve found they’re rarely urgent.

    1. Medium Sized Manager*

      The other nice thing in Gmail is the snooze option. I love saying “this is a Monday” problem just to clear it out on a busier day

  68. Yay Email*

    I can’t do a rule/sort where things go into folders before I see them because then my brain doesn’t look for them/process them.

    When coming back from vacation (a week) I usually have about 1K emails:
    +switch to only “unread” in Outlook
    +I sort by “from” so I can delete spam/sales quickly
    +delete things that are handy but not readable during high pressure times (newsletters, listserv questions, generic weekly updates from partners, etc.)
    +then read things from my boss and boss’ boss first, respond as needed
    +then read things from my direct reports, respond as needed
    +sometimes can see threads (i.e. 10 emails titled “hedgehog project:”) and quickly delete all but the most recent one (just check if some have attachments first)

    Then it’s usually manageable for my brain.

  69. Marketer*

    In previous roles, I used color coding – red for action required, yellow for I’m waiting on something or someone to move forward, and sometimes other colors for things I wanted in my inbox but didn’t necessarily need to do anything with – Purple for my team, etc. I’m a big supporter of organizing by subject or person, allowing for quick deletions or filing. Also, as mentioned above, filing emails away when you’re done with them is exquisite!

  70. Names are Hard*

    I didn’t read the other comments, sorry if this ends up repeating.
    1. Email rules. Anything that you do not need to read, send directly to a folder. Don’t send every email from “person” to a folder, that can lead to missed important things. But repetitive emails with the same subject, those are ideal for this.
    2. Email triage. Try to look at everything shortly after it comes in and give it a status.
    3. I am a zero inbox person. My system is this: If I need to answer/do it today, it stays in the inbox. If it needs worked on but can be later, I flag it with a due date of when I need to *start* working on it. Then it goes in my follow up folder. This folder is sorted by flag due date and when it hits the top of the folder, it gets put into my inbox to be worked on that day. Anything that was purely informational, goes into a folder either by department or for the individual based on how many emails I receive from the person and how often I need to refer back to the information.

    I hope this helps! My current role is less email driven, but I had a prior role where I received 100+ emails a day where almost all of them needed some sort of action from me. This system definitely saved my sanity.

  71. Medium Sized Manager*

    I am going against the grain of the first few comments: I am not a fan of rules because I just don’t look at those folders. I use my unread emails as a todo, so if it’s in a folder, it doesn’t exist. Instead, I recommend a targeted approach:

    1. Scan for anything that requires you to read it without taking any action. Take a little bit of your morning to clear those out and mark them as read.
    2. Handle anything that can be resolved in under 10 minutes.
    3. Schedule out time on your calendar for “deep think” work like a process review or more complex email. It will help you see the things you have done/need to get done vs. one over-arching “I reviewed my emails” task.
    4. Accept that zero may not be your target. Sometimes it’s attainable and sometimes it’s not, and it just depends on the job.

    Good luck!

  73. Massive Dynamic*

    I’m doing this today too! Basic rule of thumb – your inbox should NEVER be your to-do list. Build that list elsewhere and move your emails out of the inbox to organized folders to reference as needed.

  74. Claudia Jean*

    This might be too basic to really be helpful, but email templates were a lifesaver in the one role I got with lots of emails (though admittedly not this many).
    I had wording worked out for the most common things I had to send out and would just copy and paste into the emails, maybe adding or changing a little if I needed to.
    It might not apply to your role, but it might help!

  75. TheBunny*

    I also get a high volume of emails. I feel your pain.

    I use sorting rules for anything that is easily marked as repetitive.

    I also follow a personal rule that unless the complexity of it dictates otherwise, if I open an email I deal with it. Whether that’s a reply, a forward to the person most applicable or filing as information. If I open it, I deal with it. I find this helps resist the “oh that’s a quick issue I can deal with later” as 15 of those “quick” issues turn into an hour of time easily.

  76. Fiona-a-a-a*

    If your organization allows this, you can use a free project management software called trello (trello dot com) to keep track of emails you need to follow up on. I say “if your organization allows this” because the easiest way is to forward your emails that you need to follow up on to trello, and government contractors and other sensitive roles can get in trouble for that.

    Switching to this system let me stop using my inbox as a to-do list (because Trello was now the to-do list), and that allowed me a lot more freedom to throw emails in a “don’t need to deal with this” folder if they weren’t immediately relevant.

    1. OP with the wild inbox*

      I wouldn’t want to set up Trello as we already have a project management system and this would add to it. But I might see if I can forward to ours, for things that I need to have accessible later on or on demand. I find search pretty bad.
      This is an interesting idea thank you.

  77. RecoveringSWO*

    I just want to reiterate the suggestions that involve you requesting that your team help lower the burden of managing a large inbox. If my boss says that they are receiving 150 emails/day, I would be understanding about both delays and formatting my email to be most efficient. Think about what of these tips would help you best for subject lines, BLUF sentences, due date placement, action required tags, etc. If someone consistently formats emails in a really helpful manner, consider sending it around as an example and praising the employee while you explain how it’s helpful.

    Also, think about how you want people to remind you if/when an email falls through the cracks. Should someone call you, send a Teams message, or find you in person (perhaps suggesting that they wait until a meeting ends vs. interrupting)? What type of emails require that level of follow up vs. simply resending an email? There’s no shame in recognizing that emails might fall through the cracks due to that volume and confidently providing a course of action.

    1. OP with the wild inbox*

      It’s less about the team and more the externals. My internal team are pretty lean and mean on the email, the wider team are either sending direct asks or just cc-need to knows. The externals are needy!

      1. RecoveringSWO*

        Glad to hear your team is good, sorry it’s harder to control the externals! I bet you’ll find more efficiency after you test out some of these suggestions and build more experience–I’m cheering you on from afar!

  78. I've Got Mail*

    Many folks have already mentioned rules – I have rules that send all of my listserv messages/mass emails to one folder, then skim through it once a day for anything critical.

    I also use a priority sorting system. I have “To Do (Priority 1)” and “To Do (Priority 2)” folders, as well as “Awaiting Response” and “Upcoming.” When I come in in the morning I go through everything and sort it into the right place. I check Awaiting Response daily and follow up as needed. I use Upcoming primarily for meeting links and links to agendas that already live in the cloud – emails I need to be able to access quickly during a meeting but probably won’t need to archive. I mass delete most of the stuff in that folder every few months. Apart from these, I also have “topic” folders, which is where I sort threads about cases I’ve completed so I can consult them in future. I treat the topic folders as my archive.

  79. KareBear*

    People have given a lot of great advice on email inbox management but I have another suggestion: change the way you manage your team. Tell your team to not cc you on anything, or email you anything unless they truly needs you to do something urgently (and explain what urgent actually means!). Then get them to send summaries to you at an interval that makes sense: daily, weekly, etc. Lots of tools you can use to facilitate this (I think some mentioned above) but you can also just have them send the summary email with appropriate attachments. Make an outline for what a summary should look like (for example split by action items, or projects, or FYI). Then you have one thing you are scanning instead of 50! This is a great delegation technique that also is a good way for those under you to take more ownership of things while still getting the support from you they need.

    The only down side is you can only control this for your staff under you, but hopefully other see how helpful it is and also start doing it!

    1. Guacamole Bob*

      +1

      How many discussions have there been on this site about micromanaging bosses who want to be cc’d on everything? Don’t be that boss! If you delegate something to someone, stick it in a waiting for folder or on a check in list for that person or otherwise get it out of your inbox (ideally you wouldn’t need to monitor that things you’ve delegated have gotten done but in practice sometimes you do). Ask not to be cc’d unless necessary, and when it is necessary, treat it as informational so you can skim and file as much as possible. Don’t step in when you’re cc’d by someone on your team unless there’s a real need.

      I find myself saying things like “I saw a lot of back and forth email on that, did it get sorted out? Do you need anything from me on it?” to my direct reports at our checkins. I don’t need to read the details of every email even when it’s helpful for me to have some awareness that there is an issue being worked on. I can see that there’s email traffic, note the topic in my follow up list for that person, and then just disregard all the email itself.

  80. ElastiGirl*

    To deal with backup, especially if you get lots of external garbage: Search for “unsubscribe.” Then a) Delete them all; or b) scroll through and batch delete most of them; or c) if you have time, go through them and unsubscribe.

  81. Always Science-ing*

    I have sporadically taught PD seminars on this topic. Other folks have given great detailed suggestions up thread already, so I won’t rehash the specifics but will just second the following: block off time to deal with email 2-3 times per day; have a system to process email during that time – e.g. ala David Allen’s Getting Things Done (delete, do, delegate, defer); things that help me prioritize/triage email are: rules, conditional formatting in my inbox (boss’s emails purple, emails from team green, etc.), and colour categories (to read, waiting for, to do); the triaging methods also speed up processing, other things that speed up processing: a simple folder structure for filing, processing email from newest to oldest, training your team to use descriptive subject lines, quick steps (for filing, forwarding, etc.), quick parts (for common replies). Other key things: REDUCING your email volume!! Do this by unsubscribing from unnecessary lists; avoiding “conversation via email” – use the phone or a chat app (Teams, slack, whatever’s the norm at your company); having your staff not use email CCs to update you and instead keep you updated at their regular check-ins – or by sending ONE email at end of day with project status updates; working on culture change within your sphere(s) of influence to reduce emails being sent to you and your team. Also you need to find a system of triaging and processing that works specifically for you and be diligent about sticking with it. Best of luck!

  82. EmailQuickSteps*

    If you use folders, flags, and/or categories, Outlook’s Quick Steps can save a lot of time. I have set up a few that will do things like:

    Follow Up Next Week:
    Mark as read, Flag ‘Next Week’, Move to ‘Follow Up’ Folder

    Save:
    Mark as read, Set Retention Policy -> 5 years, Move to ‘Save’ folder
    (For anything that doesn’t require action but I want to keep for my records).

    Newsletter:
    Categorize as ‘Newsletter’, Set Retention Policy -> 1 month, Move to ‘Mass Emails’ folder
    (If I have some downtime, I might look at this later; if not, it eventually goes away on its own).

    You can also combine Quick Steps with Power Automate to automatically save attachments or copies of emails to locations. For example, I need to save every attachment related to a specific project in a specific folder on my Drive, but no other action is required. Quick Steps file the email to a specific folder and Flag it; Power Automate recognizes a newly flagged email in that email folder and saved the attachments with my preferred naming convention in my preferred file location.

    Good luck wrestling the Inbox!

  83. Abogado Avocado*

    This is what has saved me as a lawyer and a manager: (1) Learn to be a power user of whatever email system your office is using. Virtually every email client system has a tutorial. Take it! (2) Establish folders (and, if needed, subfolders) for the types of emails you get; (3) Establish rules or filters (depending on which system you’re using) that will shunt emails directly to the relevant folder the minute they hit your inbox. Don’t be afraid to establish rules that send some emails directly to the trash if you can’t unsubscribe; (4) Make it a habit to review your in-box throughout the day to read new emails.

    Having done all this, your file system should help you know what folders you absolutely need to check and what others (e.g., for newsletters or listservs) that you don’t need to act on or read immediately. Depending on the email client, you may be able to set up alerts that tell you when certain important emails arrive, necessitating your review.

  84. Steve*

    I’m an events person so nearly everything I get via email is about a particular event (an approval, an inquiry, a vendor giving me a banquet event order, etc) and I have a system where I just file everything in their own folder by event title sorted by date; i.e. 082924 Happy Hour – there are sub folders for ‘budget approval’ and “menu”, and a couple of other topics. Occasionally when there’s some problem, I’ll create a sub folder for the conversation about that and stick everything there. Once I got used to the rhythm of it, it’s easyish to maintain. Once the event is over and everything is paid, it goes into a larger ‘archive’ folder.

    I also am one of those who don’t use the ‘rule’ thing in Outlook – but I reserve 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at the end of the work day to go over the in box – answer, file, delete, etc.

    It all largely works – having more than a couple hundred emails in my in box just stresses me out. It does help to divide by sender – that will help me toss all things about one event into a folder since I’m usually dealing with a specific person for each event.

    I also get a LOT of vendor offers – and sometimes if you don’t respond in a day or two, they just keep sending their emails…. immediately post pandemic there was an uptick in the volume and frequency of this that I have never seen in my professional life. I had to politely ask to remove me from their list as the collective onslaught was way too much. I get that you’re rebuilding your business, but bombarding potential customers isn’t the way to do it.

    1. OP with the wild inbox*

      How many events do you have on the go at anyone time? We have up to 75. Is that insane to have a seperate folders for each? It seems like a lot and that it would be a bit clunky for filing. But I can see it’s value for accessing stuff later. What do you do if an email has more than one event referenced, e.g internal emails with multiple action points?

      1. Teapot Wrangler*

        Hi @OP – in that case, you could just copy the email into two places. I often do this if, for example, I have an email that I want to follow up on but is also a nice email that I want to save for my appraisal. Literally, just CTRL + C, CTRL + V into the folder in Outlook.

        I went a bit mad with folders at my last job and so at this one, I just have Action, Waiting For, Archive, :D. I am now finding that is too hard to find stuff so am going to set up additional folders but filing in two or three places isn’t too hard at all!

  85. Media Monkey*

    i got way less stressed when i stopped trying to achieve inbox zero! I use the outlook Focus inbox and just check the “other” inbox periodically., i find that most of my newsletters etc go in there. you can train it to deliver some of your update stuff in there so it’s not filed away but it’s not in front of you interrupting your flow. i don’t file emails and find that i can generally find what i’m looking for by searching keywords or the sender in my inbox. i used to spend hours filing and sorting emails, so this gives me time back to read and action them! i also keep a paper to do list where i write down actions that i personally need to take or follow up on (you could do this by flagging or adding to a digital to do list if that’s more your jam!).

  86. Pls send halp*

    Any tips specific to digging out of email holes? I have both too many folders/layers of folders and too many emails accumulated (a lengthy leave compounded this) that I am now faced with slogging through. I’d like to have a clean folder structure first and then go through, otherwise I’m finding it very inefficient to dig through where I should file each email as I slog through the clean up. Thanks!

    1. Rose*

      When digging out, I just extensively use a “done” folder. You can set up complicated filing systems when you have time but if you are playing catch up, you can file most things in done.

      Also, job dependent, but likely anything more than say 3 weeks old probably has already been addressed or wasn’t that important.

    2. Fiona-a-a-a*

      My favorite strategy for unburying after a long leave is resigning.

      If you don’t want to do that, though, I’d recommend blocking significant amounts of time on your calendar to work on it over the coming days/weeks, identifying types of emails that will never need your attention and batch deleting them ruthlessly by whatever automated system your software allows, and starting at the top so you can mark resolved things resolved the first time you encounter them.

    3. Caramel & Cheddar*

      I think I’d still use Rules / Quick Steps here, but just use them on your folders instead of your inbox. e.g. for me and how I use email, I’d probably have ones that:
      – delete emails older than X years
      – move emails where the from: value is a specific person(s) to whichever folder they now needed to be in
      – move emails where the subject line is X to their new folders, etc.

      Since you want to set up the new folder system first, I’d do that and then just set up the rules to move things within there. But honestly deleting stuff you don’t need is probably the major one.

    4. fine-tipped pen aficionado*

      My tip is that if it’s been left unaddressed for several weeks already and no one has followed up, it’s probably safe to leave it undone for forever. Archive or delete and move on!

  87. Bookworm*

    The life without email book suggestion made me laugh. It probably very job dependent. I deal with a lot of customers/vendors, so giving up email wouldn’t be possible. If you only dealt with internal things, maybe you could get by without using it as much.

    So this is what I do with my email. I get tons.
    *Conversation view. This helps so much, especially when I come back from being out of the office
    *I only use rules for one thing that I don’t need to deal with much, but still need to keep a bit of an eye on the emails.
    *I have some general task folders, but I also have a folder for each major customer/vendor. Some customers/vendors are very bad about using decent subject lines, so I can’t search by a reference number, etc. Putting those emails in a folder dedicated just for that customer/vendor helps a great deal.
    *I do use my inbox as a to do list. I need to see it in front of me. I hate, hate, hate the pop-up reminders.
    *I do not use the reading pane in Outlook. I despise it.

      1. Bookworm*

        I think it’s because it takes up so much of the screen and it’s visual clutter for me. I don’t need it. At a previous job, where coworkers would access my email when I was out of the office (this was how things were done there), they would turn on the reading pane in EVERY ONE of my many folders and they would also change a bunch of other settings they didn’t like, but I used (such as the pop up/chime for new emails. I only need to see the envelope in my task bar).

  88. Rose*

    One thing that I don’t see suggested is to reach out to your team for help you by being careful of how and what they send.

    For instance one manager asked us to not send them thank you or confirmation emails. No replies saying thanks or ok unless something in the email solicited one. They trusted we would act on emails received and they couldn’t handle the extra volume.

    Other ways would be to ask your team to put FYI in the subject for emails that don’t need action or make sure that on a group email where you are just being kept in the loop to put you into the CC line then set up a rule to auto filter those emails into a folder for review later. Ask your team to put other keywords like “Action”, “Important”, or “Please approve” for time sensitive emails.

    Set expectations with your team on your turn around time for each type of email and set up a system to ensure that people can get an immediate response if things are on fire. Trust people not to abuse your time and if they do, have direct conversations about it.

    Then like others have said, set up set times for email clearing and make sure that is visible to your team with do not disturb on outlook/slack/teams. The day back from vacation, block at least half your day to just review emails.

  89. CzechMate*

    To add to what others have said:
    -First thing in the am, I scan my inbox for things that can be automatically archived, e.g. replies that just say “Thanks,” or “Will do,” newsletter updates, etc.
    -In my work, some of my emails are, say, notifications for tickets that need to be looked at in our database. I’m already going to check them in the database, so I go ahead and archive those as well.

    Doing that already gets my incoming emails down, which makes it less daunting to tackle the rest. During really busy times, I’ll also create an out of office reminder saying, “This is a very busy time, so please do not double email, it may take some additional time to respond,” etc. That reduces some of the pressure to respond right away.

    My office has switched to a lot of G Chat, and we’ll set up some chats and groups where we can chat about things separate from the email inbox. Ex. when something needs to be updated in certain records, one person drops it in a chat (say, “the llama grooming validation chat”) so everyone else knows that when they have a free moment they should check that chat to see if any llama grooming sessions need to be validated. That also cuts down on emails in the long term.

  90. Knitting As Foci*

    I used different flagging tools + sweeping rules + calendar alerts (all through Outlook) and it really helped, a lot. Blocking out time at the beginning and end of the day to focus on only email really helps too.

    Making sure you have conversations nested is also extremely helpful, as are having emails with certain subject lines/to or cc you/from specific people automatically marked as high importance.

    Good luck!

  91. LibrarianJ*

    We’re a Google institution, so my process is based on that:

    1) Multiple inboxes, using different stars / labels to help filter. I learned this from here: https://klinger.io/posts/how-to-use-gmail-more-efficiently. It took a while to set-up but has changed my workflows forever. This also works better for me than just folders because the things I need to act on *are still visible* — they’re just not in my inbox. My categories are Urgent Tasks, Appointments (I do a lot of consultations in which I might need to consult 3-4 different email threads for all the information that I need about the project), Non-Urgent Tasks, Waiting, and Info/For Review (publisher lists, professional development stuff, key dates, parking info, etc. — this is my messiest inbox).

    2) I use the folder/labels system to full advantage. I am a color person so I use color-coding that aligns to files in my Drive (ex — student employee correspondence has an orange label in my inbox, and files related to student employees go in an orange folder in my Drive). This is helpful even when searching — I might get a lot of false hits, but I know based on color/label which of the results are actually in the file/category I need.

    3) I put numbers before my highest-level labels and folders, in email and in my Google Drive and hard drive, so they sort in my preferred order of access. I’m also not shy about using emojis in label titles (at the end of the label so it doesn’t affect sorting) — the visual cues can be really helpful when I’m skimming quickly.

    4) If my inbox is getting overwhelming, I use snooze/scheduling to kick out some things that I can come back to in a couple of hours (or a day later in the week when my schedule is lighter, depending on urgency).

    5) I use an app called Triage.cc to manage email on my phone. This helps me keep clutter down while also helping my work-life balance! If an email comes in while I’m checking on my phone, I have to decide immediately whether to delete, send to my inbox, or respond, with a quick swipe. Once the email has been “triaged,” I can no longer access it from that app — I have to open my full inbox in the Gmail app or on my computer. It’s an easy way to delete the unneeded emails as I go, while also not missing anything during off-hours, while also avoiding getting sucked into the mess that is in my inbox *especially* during off-hours when I’m really only checking for ’emergencies.’

  92. email settings*

    The biggest tip I have (that I don’t see in the first few comments) is to constantly switch between different sort options in your Outlook inbox. I will flip between read/unread regularly, especially when I’m behind on email. And then I’ll do a lot of sorting by date (my default), by from (useful to prep for meetings), and by subject (useful to make sure something gets done and then you can put the whole conversation in a folder).

    I also do conditional formatting so I see emails from my management chain more easily. And I have rules to automatically folder stuff that I only need for reference purposes (some reports, stuff like that).

    1. OP with the wild inbox*

      Thank you, I flip between views a bit but you’re right, it can help to really move stuff out more easily.
      I’m going to have to look at more conditional formatting.

  93. Bunny Watson*

    I will only add a suggestion to make sure that you are using your work email only for work to try to keep any more piling on. I know that many places have strict rules about this, but others are a little fuzzier, so you would know best. Even if you’re not using your email for online shopping or anything, there may be grey areas. For example, my professional listservs are on my gmail account and not my work account as I can check that once a day or on whatever schedule without it cluttering my inbox. Yes, I could filter those according to outlook rules, but it’s really better for my peace of mind to not have that even visible until I choose to go look at the other account.

  94. Miss Kat*

    This is for Outlook. I find Categories very, immensely, helpful. I read an email, decide if I need to do something now or if it can wait. If it can wait, I mark it as UNread and categorize it with Follow Up or whatever other category will kind of help you remember the gist of the email without having to open it again.

    I work in the trucking industry in AP, so I have things marked as Agent Deduct, Driver Deduct, Agent Pending, Customer Pending, Disputes, Credit/Cancelled/Voided, etc. Right now I have about 30 categories that I use on a daily basis. Whatever I need to go back to is kept marked as Unread, but now with a category, so I know I’ve already looked at it. I can then go through the rest and get rid of what I can.

    I have folders. Folders are your friend. Every email stays in the inbox until it’s completely dealt with and then it all goes into my Correspondence folder. If it’s there, it’s done. Other folders are Invoices, Refund Requests, Statements, Agent Statements, Payments, etc.

    When I first started my job 4 1/2 years ago, my inbox had about 8000 unread emails. The part time guy before me didn’t believe in Categories or Folders. It was a mess. It took me 2 years to clean it up and go through everything he should have done. I’m now down to a respectable. 1300 emails and I answer what I can in the moment and send it to Correspondence. I close an invoice – all emails for that invoice go to Correspondence. Statements go right to that folder since my boss takes care of those. All the emails in my inbox are current to the last 6 to 9 months. Sometimes things just stall no matter how much I beg for an answer, and those emails sit there until someone comes looking for answers.

    Long and short. It will take time. Just keep plugging away and it will get done. There is light at the end of the tunnel, I promise.

  95. Frosty*

    Over-filtering can be an issue but then you can set a recurring alarm/alert to remind you to go through the filtered emails.

    I’ve been in various jobs that had very heavy email loads. I do pretty well to keep my personal and professional inboxes at “zero”

    Using “threading” in your emails can help – some programs do it automatically (like Outlook 365 vs desktop). Then instead of looking like 50 emails, it can look like 5 conversations that have 10 emails in them – not quite as daunting.

    Double check that you actually NEED to receive all of these – I frequently get CC’d on emails that I may have needed in the past (or my predecessor) but I’m no longer involved in. Follow up until you stop getting those.

    Others you may only need to get the final or 1 out of 10 emails on the subject, so let the people sending know that too – “I don’t need to know each time you buy a widget, only when the final product is assembled”.

    Otherwise I’d say filters and a reminder to check filtered email. Only the most pertinent and essential emails should be hitting your prime inbox, so you know that when you get the “alert” of a new email, it’s actually important.

    1. Frosty*

      I should have said:

      I use read/unread as important markers as well. I will snooze emails (most systems have this) if I’m not ready to deal with it.

      Nothing should really “sit” in your inbox – deal with it, or snooze/remind yourself to deal with it later. Something sitting in “inbox” should be an alert to “ACTION”.

      A key piece as well – if you have hundreds or thousands of old “unread” emails. Just mark all as read – the designation is no longer important if they are months/years old. Archive your emails so they are still searchable, but move on.

      Mark all as read for old emails or archive them so they aren’t sending a signal to your brain that they are still to be dealt with. They can be recalled later but the time of urgency is passed and it’s no longer something that should be sitting waiting for you to “read”.

  96. Quinalla*

    Yes, try out some filters and rules – especially informational emails that you can read later or notices that generally you don’t even need to look at but can’t just unsubscribe.

    For me, the best thing to not completely interrupt my other workflow is to check email on a regular schedule and not just be checking it all day, every minute. Turn off notifications if you haven’t and set up times to check email and don’t check outside that unless someone is like “I sent you an urgent email on X, please look at it”

  97. OlympiasEpiriot*

    Learn to use the Advanced Search in your e-mail app, whatever it is, in addition to all the suggestions here.

    I have Outlook and automatically have FOCUSED and OTHER Inbox tabs. I use rules, I use folders.

    I skim my e-mails when on transit and erase as many as I can, but, they come in faster than I can do that.

    Advanced search is my best helper.

  98. Port*

    Know the different kinds of email you receive. For instance, some is informational, others need a reply. If you’re using Outlook, flag anything you either need to read to be informed or need to circle back to and respond to. Flag anything that will remind you of a task.

    Do not scroll down your inbox looking for flags. You can find them (if you’re not using the new Outlook) in the Tasks pane. This can be organized by due date, but I just think of it as a bank of tasks. You can use the category function to organize them visually by color if that is helpful. There are a lot of options for organizing what’s here.

    The key to the Tasks pane is that you habitually go to it throughout the day and look at your bank of work. Read what’s informational and then unflag it. Complete tasks people have asked you to do and then write them back to confirm it’s done and then unflag their mail.

    The Tasks pane also lets you create tasks of your own, which is highly useful. They appear right alongside your flagged email, so you truly have the bank of work all together to review across the day. Just make sure you get in the habit of looking over at it often so it becomes a practice. I very rarely have let something slip by since I began working this way—and those instances were usually when I didn’t check my work bank in Tasks before ending or starting my day.

  99. Charlotte*

    Laura Mae Martin’s book “Uptime” has a good chapter on treating email like laundry, processing it all before you start actioning it. Her background is being the productivity coach at Google and the book is based on what she taught the staff there.

  100. CoffeeOwlccountant*

    I want to call out Quick Steps as a huge game changer in Outlook, especially if you get a lot of email that gets treated the same way. The pane is on the Ribbon. You program a one-click button to do a specific task that can have one or multiple steps.

    An example: I get a lot of vendor invoices that I have to send to our AP team with my approval for payment. I have a Quick Step set up for these invoices that first forwards the invoice to the AP team along with a saved, prewritten message with my approval, marks the email as read, and moves it to the appropriate folder.

    This is also life-changing to help you sort emails into your most commonly used folders without using rules. I have approximately eight zillion rules, but there are always emails that don’t meet the rule criteria that you can deal with in just one click.

  101. fine-tipped pen aficionado*

    The most useful thing I’ve done is to ask people I have regular 1:1 meetings with or just folks who regularly have a lot of questions/non-urgent requests to save them up for the meeting. I also ask folks to keep email threads about a single topic and start a new thread for a different question/topic which, though it technically increases the volume of emails, makes them easier to apply filters/rules/categories to.

    And if, like me, you eventually get behind anyway…. if something has been rotting at the bottom of your inbox for a month you can probably just delete it.

  102. Sylvia*

    I work on a lot of projects simultaneously, some of which start and stop for a year with multiple collaborators, so I developed a system in Gmail to help me keep up with the madness. I use labels to categorize the emails (they’re like folders, you just have to remove the inbox label) and incorporate a numbering system to designate the priority level–for example,
    titling a label as “0 – Teapot invoices”. The zero indicates that it is something I’m currently working on, and it has the added benefit of making the label appear at the top. I start all the labels that I’m currently working on as 0’s so that they’ll appear at the top of the list grouped together. Next are the 1’s, which are sleeping projects that will need to be addressed in a couple of months, and so on. I can change the number of the label as needed to move it up or down in priority. You can also color code in Gmail, but I don’t think it’ll group the same-colored labels together (I don’t use it for that reason).

    I also use the starred and unread features of Gmail. Unread are the new emails. I do a purge of junk mail and answer everything that can be answered quickly. If the response requires research, a more in-depth response, or involves an answer that I’m waiting to hear back about, then I star the email so I can return to it later. It will then move up into the starred category of the inbox. I just have to be diligent about scheduling time to answer the starred emails.

  103. Slinky*

    I have a similarly busy inbox (though not as busy as yours!). I haven’t found a way to get it fully under control, but here’s what’s helped:

    1) Unsubscribe to everything you can. Vendor sending you random message? Unsubscribe! Conference you attended two years ago reminding you that the videos are coming down in two months? Unsubscribe! This save you the time to delete them AND makes your new message number seem less overwhelming.
    2) Check your email at fixed intervals. Getting that new email chime multiple times an hour is very stressful. If you can, set your email not to notify you when you receive a new message. Just commit to checking at certain times. You might log in and see 50 new messages in the last hour, which is going to suck, but wouldn’t it have been worse to hear the chime 50 times?
    3) If you can deal with something right away, do it. This is an item done that you never have to think about again!
    4) If something needs more follow-up, put it in a to-do list (notebook, digital, whatever!). That way, you don’t have to worry about managing the email itself. You can find it later when you need it, but you have a record elsewhere of the task.
    5) If you’re coming back after multiple days off, just know in advance that you’ll need 1-2 hours (or more) to do nothing but email and prepare for that. If you’re able to work from home, this is a great thing to do remotely where you can wear your pajamas and not be interrupted by coworkers.

    I don’t have any trainings to recommend, I’m afraid, but these strategies have helped my email at least seem a little less overwhelming.

  104. Bartimaeus*

    I use the archive button, liberally, for anything that I am done with. That plus certain filters (automated notifications from a tool we use get shunted to another folder where I can check them occasionally) work well.

  105. Slaw*

    Folders, folders, folders! Create folders with inbox rules that direction traffic from certain incoming emails to different folders. This will help immensely with knowing where to look for things that actually need your attention.

  106. H.C.*

    I work for a gov’t agency in a public facing role, so I’ve resigned to acknowledging that my mailbox is always gonna be an amorphous mass of basically barely organized chaos. I gave up on inbox zero (professional & personally) and just resigned myself to an skim at various points of my workday to see what needs to be prioritized.

    1. owen*

      this. inbox zero is fine if that’s what works for you and your situation, but if it’s just an additional source of stress… drop it. let your inbox be messy. email search functions are awesome and will generally find anything old you need to find no matter where you file it, and there are many ways to highlight new things with or without setting up rules, filter unread is a standard i think in most mail programmes these days for example.

      you can combine this with rules as many above have mentioned to auto-mark things as read, but if part of the overwhelming feeling you are getting is because you feel the need to actively clear down your inbox – don’t.

      i am also a fan of including ’email will not be reviewed on return’ in any ooo message, and just marking it read, or maybe checking for a specific important sender (vip client, boss, whoever) by name and then just marking off the rest. chances are by the time you are back most of that has been handled anyway.

  107. Demure & Mindful*

    BATCHED EMAILS

    This has been lifesaving for me. I use an app Boomerang, and I set a schedule where emails only push through at the top of each hour. Before, just seeing each new email come in could distract me away from whatever high-concentration task I was doing. But now when an hour’s worth of emails come in, I take a few minutes to sort and prioritize them all and then don’t have to worry about new tasks for the next hour. Of course, this only works if your work generally doesn’t need really fast turnaround (and I have let people who might need me urgently know that I only see emails every hour and that they can chat or text me with anything really important)

    1. Orv*

      Related: Turn off email notifications. They destroy productivity because they’re so distracting, and email by definition is usually not time-sensitive.

  108. Harried CEO*

    I had to throw money at the problem – I’ve been using Superhuman for almost 3 years, and it saves me. My favorite part is that I snooze all the emails in my inbox until the next day (or from my phone I snooze them until I’m on desktop).

    Reminders, delayed sends, easy keystroke navigation…I manage 2 jobs and a crazy personal mailbox all from the same window. Not cheap (like $30/month), but I finally came to the conclusion my sanity was worth it

  109. Sack of Benevolent Trash Marsupials*

    I’m on Outlook, and my whole job is my email. I have drastically changed my method of managing email over the last decade in this job.

    I used to have a folder for everything, and rules, and my goal was to keep my inbox to under 200 emails. I would spend a slow day or two a few times a year filing emails to achieve this goal. Now I have 51,145 emails in my inbox and only one remaining rule, and haven’t filed anything in a couple of years because it’s too overwhelming and also as others have mentioned, I don’t really need the folders anymore for quick access.

    I do have one folder I still routinely contribute to, which is a For Reference folder on things that rarely come up and aren’t easily findable in my inbox due to my inability to remember exactly what to search for. The only other folder I will never delete is my Priceless Exchanges folder, which contains either hilarious emails, or ones containing praise that I read to cheer myself up on rough days.

    I want to second all the commenters who use categories, because that is really the organizational structure that works for me also. I have categories for for all of the different components of my work, and then also some additional categories I can add to these to see at a glance what the status is: green for action item, red for completed, and yellow for waiting for a response. (I also have one that is labeled NO IDEA for when something comes in that I have absolutely no idea what to do with, and another labeled Outrage for when the content of the email pisses me off). I do read or at least skim emails as they come in and assign categories.

    Categories make it easy to quickly scroll to scan for action items or to find that email about the TPS reports or whatever from a few days ago that is now buried several scrolls down. I still occasionally miss an email, but it’s rare.

  110. Lolllee*

    I use conditional formatting for my emails and it has made a HUGE difference helping ne prioritize. I have different formatting (color, font, size, ect of subject text) for emails that need immediate attention, like from my manager, external, where I am in the “To” line rather than CC, email from regulatory agencies or important customers. I also go through emails really quick first thing in the morning and flag emails that require my personal action or response.

  111. Teafortwo*

    If you spent 2 minutes on each of the 150 emails, that would be 5 hours out of your day. So this is an email problem, not a you problem.

    I also think that the kind of productivity hacks that you used to work when my workload was more regular and admin focused (folders, categories etc) are harder to maintain when you are dealing with loads of more stuff which requires judgement. When I was more junior, I used to get an email and, if it wasn’t a newsletter or similar, there was generally a clear task for me – e.g. ‘I’ve been introduced to this person who is interested in llama grooming training, I will arrange a meeting to discuss scheduling the training’. Now it’s more like ‘I’ve been introduced to this person who wants to explore a city-wide partnership on llama grooming , who should come to the meeting, what costs should I write up, do they understand about our funding situation, can I get 5 mins with my boss to discuss this before the meeting’ etc etc etc. It’s harder to just add it to the category ‘arrange training meeting’ or whatever.

    I have some weird rules:
    – Don’t apologise for a late response if you don’t think it’s worthy of an apology (or if you can get away with not apologising). I.e. if you respond after three days to an enquiry which is not time sensitive, why apologise? This will make you feel better.
    – If it feels too much, don’t start with emails. They can pull your focus from the day. If something is urgent-urgent people can call, message, hunt you down etc. Start for 30 minswith a task that you enjoy and then the email explosion may feel less pressing and stressful.
    – I have 3 folders: TODAY, the next days date, Completed. Move anything you want to do today into that folder, anything else you want to do at some point in the future into the next days date, and anything done into Completed.
    – Ask people you work with closely not to copy you in on emails and not to send you lots of emails while you are away – appreciate this isn’t possible with everyone but will probably cut down at least a little.

  112. Adipose*

    The most useful shift for me was to stop thinking about it as managing _email_ and start thinking about it as managing _time_. I spend 13-25 hours each week participating in meetings, so a functional system for email is essential! I calendar the first 30 minutes of every day for email, so I can settle in to the day and identify any obvious adjustments in priorities.

    Beyond that, most of my inbox rules are paired with calendar appointments — because I have a fixed time for approving invoices each week, the autogenerated notifications bypass my inbox and I just log in to the invoice system at the appointed time. Project management system notifications that require action are assigned a category (this declutters my view — I sort desktop Outlook by category — but keeps in inbox) and handled during my 60-minute Workfront timeblock near the end of every day. The Workfront notifications that don’t require action (or a calendar block) bypass my inbox into an assigned folder. (This last one alone removes 25-200+ emails every week, depending on the week.)

    I don’t fully use this method, but it was a really helpful framework for me: https://kellynolan.com/email

  113. Ann*

    So glad you asked as someone in a heavy email industry! I haven’t had time to set up a system, I can’t find the right email in the right folder when I try to search and refer back later, and when I’ve tried rules in the past, I’ve had needed emails unintentionally get swept up. So I leave everything in my inbox, I only delete invite acceptances, and I really use flags. If I owe someone more involved follow-up than just a quick response to fire off, it goes on my Outlook calendar in a loose ends catch-up time block.

  114. higheredrefugee*

    While I generally don’t approve of checking email outside of work, one tactic that worked for me during the busy season of one job I held was going through the non-urgent stuff like newsletters during my training commute (public transportation or another person driving required, they were also gathered by Outlook rules). I also trained my staff to send me an update email daily or every other day, depending on projects or person, rather than just for every small thing, which I read on my commute home. I convinced my boss to do the same thing from me which made it easier for both of us. I also like to let things marinate before responding and the evening update let things work out in the back of my mind before responding in the morning. I also let others know when they didn’t need to FYI cc: me, or if I only needed to be informed at the end, or perhaps needed only weekly updates, etc. not everyone outside my direct influence could be convinced but it did cut down on things.

  115. Orv*

    My biggest tip is, don’t use your inbox as a to-do list. It gets out of control fast. Keep a separate to-do list somewhere. (I like Trello, personally, but there are many options. For a long time I just used an outline-style text document.)
    If you’re using Gmail you can actually copy-and-paste the URLs of messages into to-do list items, which makes it easier to find the relevant email thread later, even if you’ve archived it.

  116. LargeInbox*

    150 emails a day doesn’t seem like that much to me, but the key is to skim for important stuff first thing in the am and, if possible, last thing in the day so you make sure you don’t miss something essential. Then don’t stress over the rest. And use search to find stuff related to specific topics.

  117. Ham Sandwich*

    I’ve had to deal with large and small volumes of email over the years, and there’s a few strategies that have worked well for me:

    1. Use an “Unread” search folder/filter as your default view. This may take some effort if you have a pile of unread emails to sift through, but once you have nothing in your “Unread” pile you can move on to the next strategy.

    2. Take action on every email that comes in. For me that can be one of a few actions: delete it if it’s junk or anything I don’t care about, schedule it if it’s some kind of meeting request, forward it if it’s something that needs to be delegated, turn it into a task if it’s something I need to do that’s going to take more than a few minutes, file it and tag/categorize/flag it if it’s just informational.

    3. Use automation. Lots of good suggestions about that in other replies – use what suits you and your software best. One thing I’ve found helpful is Outlook’s “Quick Actions” feature. I have one that takes the content of an email and dumps it into an appointment for me. I use that a lot to schedule time for myself when I need to tackle something later that’ll take some time. It’s really handy because I don’t forget about it and I block off time to accomplish it on my calendar.

    4. Find a system and use it. I use Outlook notifications to take a quick glance when an email comes in to see if it’s something I need to pay attention to immediately. If it’s not, it’ll wait until I turn my attention back to email, which I normally do a couple times an hour.

    5. Put email on its own desktop. Windows, MacOS and Linux all have ways to create virtual desktops, which can be a great way to isolate your email so that it becomes less of a distraction during other work, and a point of focus when it needs to be. I generally have a few desktops setup at the same time for various projects, but one is always just for Outlook.

  118. Lobstermn*

    I do a first pass and knock out anything irrelevant (ads) or quick (invoice received, thank you). Anything that’s more than a sentence I copy/paste keywords into my to-do list.

    Then I have 5-10 tasks I need to spend time on, but I don’t need to spend a memory slot to keep track of them, because they’re all right there in the list when I finish a task or need to rotate my attention.

  119. yirna*

    Ooof, I typed this out and my work VPN deleted it. Here I go again.

    I used to teach email management workshops for my organization’s information management team, and I actually have a master’s degree in library and information sciences. You may say I’m a bit of a keener when it comes to this, and email management was literally my favourite part of my job. (A caveat, I only have tips for Outlook!)
    I had originally started this another way, but I’d actually like to reframe this. There’s two approaches to email management: reactive and proactive. Reactive is where you are now: there’s been a deluge, there are SO MANY emails, and you just need to get back on top of the pile. Proactive is for later, when you’ve got some time to think about how you do your work and how it would help you most to have it organized on an ongoing, even self-maintaining basis, even in times of crisis.
    The thing that makes information management hard is that everyone thinks and works differently (and that’s great! We need all kinds of people to make the world work). A corporate file structure needs to be organized differently from your email, because the corporate structure needs to work for everyone, and your email structure only needs to work for you.
    To that effect, the Inbox Zero method may not be for you. It’s not for me (Inbox Zero is actually called “Out of Sight is Out of Mind” for me). It’s not even for most of the tech execs who sang its praises when it got big. Instead, I use a method I call Touch It Once. Set yourself up so that everything coming into your mailbox can be sorted and triaged quickly, in a way that gives you instant information on its importance.
    Next, onto my 5 top tips.
    1. Categories and Rules
    A lot of people in this thread have already mentioned categories. Colour categories provide instant information about the email they’re applied to. Even better, rules can automatically apply the categories to emails as they come in.

    I’ve always recommended starting by creating a category in your favourite colour called “Transitory” (though you could always call it “Low Priority” or “Read Me Later.”) For most people, most of the emails you’ll get will likely fall into this category, so it may as well be your favourite colour! Use this for emails that you know you don’t need to ever read right away—newsletters, All Staff emails, or automatic replies from the IT Help Desk, for example.

    There are two popular techniques when it comes to categories: Action-based or File-based. Action-based categorizes based on what you need to do next (I use flags for ‘needs action’ instead), while File- or Portfolio-based categories are based on subject or topic. I find this one more useful because once I’m done with the thread, I can pull it from my inbox into its corresponding sub-folder without needing to put any thought into where it needs to go—the information is already there.

    Once you’ve created categories for your most common files (without getting granular at all), use rules to apply them to the emails. The rules wizard uses the “IF this THEN that EXCEPT IF the other thing” logic. So, IF the subject line includes “Fergus” THEN apply the Fergus category, or IF the sender is All-Staff-Communications THEN apply the Read Me Later category (I’ve never needed the EXCEPT IF filters). You can go back and add things to the rules later, or add additional rules pointing to the same category. A quick trick is to select an email that is an example of what you want the rule to apply to, then use the Rules quick pick dropdown menu in the ribbon to get the rule started. It’s way faster! Also, Rules are great for sorting through mess because they can be applied retroactively.

    Personally, I don’t recommend auto-sorting emails into subfolders unless they fall into your Read Me Later category. There’s just too big of a chance I’ll forget that things are auto-filing and I will never check it.

    2. Folders and Subfolders and Subsubfolders, oh my!
    Organizing your information into folders can be a bit of an art. It’s pretty normal to swing the pendulum a bit before you find the right balance for yourself, but a really important tip is to not get too granular. Start with folders that correspond to your categories. Maybe one for Finance, one for HR, and one for each of your major files. Then, you may want to subdivide from there. Finance gets divided into fiscal years, HR gets folders for each direct report.

    If you’re struggling to decide if something belongs ‘here’ or ‘there,’ there are two causes: either your folders are too granular (pull back! KISS = Keep It Simple S!), or you may simply be missing a folder. Do not fall into the trap of the Miscellaneous/Other folder. The only kitchen sink you need is your Inbox.

    3. View as Conversation
    Something that Outlook Desktop does not do by default, bafflingly, is sort your email into threads. Each email is shown by itself, then you scroll down and see it again, and again, etc. To fix this, go to the View tab on the ribbon and check off the “Show As Conversation” box (then “apply to all folders and subfolders”).

    This will group all instances of that thread together. Just click the little arrow on the left to pop the list of items down. It will even show you parts of the conversation that are in other folders, including your own replies in the Sent folder!

    I will say that most people find that any change to their view settings is a bit disruptive to their workflow. It’s uncomfortable at first because it DOES change how things look, but give it a week or two and you may end up loving it. If not, turning it off is done the same way you turned it on!

    4. Clean Up tool
    Grouping your emails into conversations really highlights how many of the emails in your mailbox are duplicated in the body of the most recent email of the thread. Outlook has provided a quick tool to delete duplicate emails since at least 2010. It’s called the Clean Up tool, and there’s even a quick button for it in the ribbon now, next to the Delete button.

    The Clean Up tool ONLY deletes duplicates. Someone replied to a question in the previous email, IN the previous email? Keeps a copy of the original. Attachments? Keeps it. Thread forks? Keeps both threads. Most recent? Keeps it. Everything else? Poof. I once saw someone delete 17,000 emails with this tool, without losing anything of value. I describe it as cleaning the pocket lint out of your mailbox.

    (Side note, you have to change a setting in your options because it won’t work on emails with categories applied by default.)

    5. Sorting options!
    Final tip! This one is great for getting back on top of the pile when you’re in crisis mode—maybe I should have put it first. Outlook provides a few really great sorting options that you may not have explored. Once you’ve applied a sort option, your emails will be sorted into groups with useful header bars separating them.

    – Date or Date (Conversations) – the default you will need to return to.

    – Type – this one is great when you’re just starting a mailbox clean up. Roll up the message and maybe SMIMETYPE (encrypted) message categories—they’re not what we’re here for. Delete all of the automatic replies and out of office messages. Delete all of the meeting replies and forwards (you can get this information in the meeting invite). Deal with all of the meeting invitations. Pocket lint gone!

    – From or By Sender – If you apply the sort filter with an email selected, you’ll still be looking at it. This can be great for deleting newsletters or other reoccurring emails (but add them to your Read Me Later category or unsubscribe before you delete them all!)

    – By Category – Once you’ve started applying categories, this can be great! Grab the header to move everything with that category at once (e.g. all of your Finance emails into the Finance 2024 folder). I like to regularly delete everything in my Transitory/Read It Later category. By marking it with that category, I’ve already made the decision that it can be deleted at some point. Trust yourself. Delete it. This is the sort option that will be most useful once you have the categories up and running.

    —

    I really hope that these tips might be useful to you! I really loved helping people get control of their information. There was nothing more cathartic than helping people get rid of the things clogging their ability to use their mailboxes… especially since it wasn’t MY mailbox. To be honest, I probably still love it too much (I typed up this list of tips from memory twice and it’s 3 pages long…)

  120. Andi*

    Does anyone else like the color flags in Outlook? They’re my system of choice. I get about 50 emails a day and actually kind of enjoy the organizing of them every morning.

    For me, the inbox is for any emails that still require me to do something, and the folders are for finished tasks or things I just need to keep a record of. So I go down my inbox, delete anything that can be tossed, and move anything that’s done or just an FYI into a folder. Tasks all have a color for me, so my emails about office admin type stuff are green, finance is yellow, work on that state project is blue, immediate attention required is red, etc. I color code everything that needs me to do something. This way it’s easy to see what my workload for the day is like with a glance at my inbox, and I can group all the similar projects together. Logging into the system to submit an invoice? Great, these other 7 yellow emails also have invoices, so might as well get them all in.

    It saves me time and mental energy.

  121. PMaster*

    I need a way to outsmart Outlook! Apparently Outlook has an Exchange Server memory limit on rules, so I try to keep them as short as possible (although this fails when people don’t include basic info). A while back I had to recreate most of my rules, as short as possible, because I exceeded the limit, and they stopped working. I just don’t see a better way to sort messages with rules to keep them separate – categories, color coding, threading and search aren’t adequate.

    1. Annie*

      I’ve been giving myself a crash course in automated inbox management myself.

      There are some ways it MAY be possible to squeeze in more filtering capability within the limit. Maybe you’re already aware of these, but for the benefit of others in the same boat, here goes!

      -Strict mode for junk email filtering. This can take a lot of upfront setup and ongoing maintenance to whitelist everyone whose messages you actually need to see.

      -For emails from senders that end up in your inbox no more than a few times per day and outlive their usefulness within a few days or once the next message from that sender arrives, you can try a Sweep rule as opposed to a regular rule. All a Sweep rule can do is move messages from a particular sender to a different folder or delete them once per day.

      -If multiple types of emails need to have the same things done to them, e.g. messages from multiple senders meeting a given condition moved to the same folder; multiple key phrases in the subject that all mean the same thing and need the same things done; and can’t be effectively dealt with using a Sweep rule, you can put all of them into one rule. You will have to go into the custom rules section to set this up.

      1. PMaster*

        I have say 50 projects that take years to complete before I can get rid of a rule – I always need to see *all* project-related emails, and they can come from anyone so strict/whitelist filtering won’t help. Usually, unread email = action needed, and keeping up with this isn’t a problem – it’s *just* the sorting. My rules are “if subject or body contains (project number, contract number or project name/site) then move message to (project number) folder.” But I run out of rule storage space with so many projects and folders!

      2. PMaster*

        I wish there was a way to have one project sort rule but you could put the conditions into an array like if like (conditions) then move to (folder):
        project1, contract1, Main St –> project1
        project2, contract2, First Ave –> project2

        You also mentioned Copilot in another reply – I’m willing to dip my toe into AI if it would help.

  122. Elissa*

    I do a combination of things to manage volume and priorities, particularly as for me if my inbox is out of control that’s a sure sign I’m feeling out of control.

    1. Rules for automated emails. I have daily emails coming in that I have to be aware of, but don’t typically have a high importance. I set up rules so they immediately get filed and don’t clutter my inbox, but I can find them easily if required.
    2. I try to avoid using my inbox as my to do list. Emails either get filed, deleted, or sorted into Action (I need to do something) or Waiting (someone else needs to do something before I can or I’m monitoring for progress). That way I know anything in the inbox hasn’t been processed yet, and I don’t have to worry something got lost in the noise.
    3. Do an initial purge each morning, as it’s remarkable how many come in overnight, or if I’ve been away/tied-up for a day. Everything either gets deleted or filed as above.
    4. I have told my team, that if they CC me on an email (and I’m happy for them to!) that if they need something for me, they need to specify that in the email, otherwise I’m treating it as an FYI and skimming and filing it.

    It doesn’t solve all the issues, but I feel less at risk of dropping the ball on something.

  123. Non non non all the way home*

    BEFORE COMMENTING:
    OP asked for training to help him sort through his many email messages. He mentioned tips are okay, but they’re clearly less ideal than training. As of my comment, he now has 275 additional messages to sort through — these comments, including many repeating the advice that he should sort emails into folders by setting up filters or rules. I suggest posting additional tips only if they’re different from what’s already here.
    (Sorry to add to your comments to sort through OP, just hoping it minimizes your work. Although I realize it might be useful as those numerous people who reply to “reply all” emails that accidentally were sent to thousands of people with “Just stop replying everyone!”)

  124. Six Feldspar*

    You mentioned that you’re struggling in particular with coming back from leave to a mass of emails. When I go on leave I create a folder and set up a rule specifically for emails received in that time period. Then when I’m back I go to that folder first, sort it by sender, and delete/mark as read as much as possible (eg standard IT updates, weekly e-mails from a group, etc etc). Then I can start reading by sender or by newest date and at least some of the work is done.

  125. Teapot Wrangler*

    I lean pretty heavily on Outlook categories. I block out the first and last chunk of my day for emails (although sometimes it does take longer).
    I do a quick first past deleting everything I don’t need to open
    Then, I mark everything with a category – Boss name, To Read etc.
    I move stuff I need to do into my Actions folder
    I move stuff where I’m expecting a reply into my Waiting For folder
    I then go through and work on my emails in the order of Important, Boss name, then whatever is my top priority at the moment
    I don’t always get through everything but I do try to be at inbox zero so that if something urgent or important comes in, I can spot it immediately

    If you haven’t read Getting Things Done, I’d definitely recommend it. Would a speed reading course help you?

  126. Rachel C*

    I tried using rules and folders, but that just meant emails that went out of my inbox into a folder languished unread forever more (ok, not really, but for a lot longer than ideal). A colleague showed me some of the uses of the Tasks window in Outlook and I am a convert, about six months and counting now.

    I built myself a couple of Quick Steps which will raise an email as a Task and also file it, so my inbox gets emptied, but the Task retains the link to the original email. Every morning I schedule 30 minutes to go through my inbox: if it can be filed without action I do so, if it needs a reply that will take <2 min I leave it, if it needs a longer read or some other action, I raise it as a Task. Same for my Teams messages (being able to raise Tasks from Teams is a lifesaver, I used to have a million pinned Teams chats, now it's all in Tasks).

    Then I do a quick prioritisation of all the Tasks I just added (I divide into 'snaps', 'slogs' and 'learning', and add deadlines if they have them) and pick out 3-6 to add to the My Day functionality in Tasks. For the rest of the 30 minutes I work through any "<2 min" emails left in the inbox, and then I move on to working through the My Day list around the rest of my day. If I finish my initial 3-6, I pull out another 3 and work on them. (The way my brain works, if I pull out more than 6 I will get choice paralysis and do nothing, so 3 at a time is better.)

    This gets my inbox to zero (or close to it) at the start of the day, and I try to stay disciplined about only checking at intervals, say if I have a short gap between meetings or when switching tasks, and to keep to my file / <2 min / Task discipline when checking.

    My last half hour before finishing for the day I look over my calendar for the next few days, and do one last pass through my emails / Teams messages to set priorities and deadlines, and do as many "snaps" or <2 min replies as I can manage.

    The My Day window has a Suggestions tab which is great for pulling out Tasks that were on your My Day recently but didn't get done, and things that have a deadline coming up (or in the past, oops)

  127. Terrible Aardvark*

    There’s an email management product called superhuman that’s life-changing. It diverts all of the calendar updates and notifications into a separate folder (so you can just glance quickly to make sure something didn’t end up in the wrong place and delete all) and has very intuitive keystroke commands for inbox management. HIGHLY recommended!

  128. Religious Nutter*

    More than anything else, you need rules. Whatever application you’re using (usually Outlook in a corporate environment), you have access to fairly advanced rules for sorting email. Familiarize yourself with the capabilities of your email application and then absolutely go to town with rules.

    Everyone I’ve ever seen who’s trying to sort through 10,000 unreads or whatever thinks they can (or have to) sort through every email by hand. They’re absolutely determined to read and judge every email. Don’t do this to yourself. Automating repetitive tasks is what computers are FOR.

  129. ShiftyKitty*

    I’m a little late to the commenting on this but here’s my thoughts and methods.

    First, Inbox Zero is not something I subscribe to – it’s just too prone to failure and then I feel like I can’t keep up. I follow the 4 D method (Delete, Do, Delegate, and Defer (read the “Best practices for Outlook” article from Microsoft)). My inbox is basically the “Do” section – everything in the inbox is meant for action or a task; once that task is done, I move it out of the inbox. I try to make a judgement on each email within seconds to triage my inbox quickly.

    – Rules and filters – get all that automate clutter out of your main inbox – This is all the Delete things.
    – Outlook Quick Actions – Set these functions up on ribbon (or with key shortcuts) for your most frequently used actions (send to folder, flag to follow up, forward to team, etc). I use this typically for Defer and Delegate functions.
    – Follow Up Flags – This is my most used function. I can set it up to follow up on a date and set reminders (very quick with a quick action). Then I set up a custom search folder for that follow up flag and pin the search folder to my favorites. It lets me treat emails like “to do” tasks and then complete then and close them out when done.
    – Colors everywhere – Conditional formatting with different colors and fonts styles (italic, bold, etc) for VIPs and key stakeholders. Additionally, use the category feature as well too – color code your calendar and emails (this also makes things easier to find later)

  130. Jshaden*

    I think the biggest thing to note is you will still have to figure out how all the Outlook/email functions and suggestions here can be used to streamline YOUR particular use case and your job. In my previous position, I had a much higher volume of email and most of it was interrelated, so I only had one or two high level folder and relied more heavily on Categories to be able to find what I needed. In my current position, my projects are much more discrete, so it makes sense to have a folder for each of them. In general, here is how I generally use the various feature and functions to manage my email.

    1. Folders – at least two, one for emails that have been processed and one to filter “office spam” to, or more if your job lends itself to discrete areas where an email obviously only belongs in one folder. I only move email to folders if it has been processed (acted on or determined to be FYI). My top level is usually by fiscal year, so I can save older emails into a Outlook .pst file and move them off the server to stay under our organizations size limits.
    2. Rules – I generally only use these for moving “office spam” that I occasionally need to review or check on to a folder. I also leave these emails marked “unread” so I know they are there, and mark them unread once a day or as I have a chance to scan the new subject lines.
    3. Conversation view – My preferred view for Inbox or when I’m not otherwise looking for a specific email, this way if I can tell quickly if an issue has already be resolved while I was out of office, etc. I have it set so I can also see the emails I sent as part of the chain.
    4. Categories – This was my lifesaver when I was in a program management role, I could mark and email with Program B, Project A, Finance or whatever other Categories were relevant, and then dump it in the Program B folder. Made it much easier to find all the most recent Finance emails for all Projects within Program B, for example.
    5. Flags – for items in my inbox that need action and have a due date, but can’t be completed immediately.
    6. Inbox – for items that need an action only. I get anxious when I start creeping over ~15 emails in my inbox.

    For “getting back from vacation” or “peak time recovery” or “one week on/on week off COVID” triage:

    1. Sort by type, go through all meeting makers
    2. Sort by From, delete or mark as read and file anything you can adjudicate without opening based on sender and subject line
    3. While sorted by From, open and review anything from boss and grandboss
    4. Sort by conversation, apply Categories to conversations based on subject line if possible.
    5. Start working through conversations based on priorities.

    During COVID week on/week off, I also had a “last week” folder that I would dump all my unread emails in first thing Monday. I’d work to triage through that folder while more easily able to see what was coming in live.

  131. GyreFalcon*

    For me, rules are helpful for routine reports that I may not need to look at as they arrive, but my real life saver is Categories and Flags – anything requiring no action from me just gets filed, sometimes in a ‘to read’ folder to be reviewed when I have time. Anything that takes less than 2 minutes to do my action I respond right away. Anything requiring more work, or waiting on a follow up, gets a category and a flag, then filed. The flagged emails show in the Task Sidebar (or in the Planner section of Teams, and the category lets me know at a glance what the next step is.

    My categories are generally along the lines of ‘waiting for response’ from one of several groups, or specific systems that I get lots of tasks for, so I can work on those in batches. Then I check them off as I complete them, plus I run through the list and update at lunch and at the end of the day to remove/update anything I missed.

    My Inbox then has only things I haven’t looked at yet, so it’s easy to see new urgent emails when they come over. Also, I use Conversation view, so that topics that may have had a lot of back and forth while I was doing something else are grouped, and I can just read down the thread from the most recent email, and file all at once.

  132. All Het Up About It*

    So I am going to read through these suggestions myself to see if there is something that I can do to improve my inbox. But something that has helped lessen my anxiety about it, is a comment from an organizational/efficiency trainer years ago. “Is answering email in your job description? No? Then it probably doesn’t need to take up as much of your day as it does.”

    Yes – of course I have to answer email to do many of the tasks in my job description, but EMAIL is not my job. Sometimes I make sure to turn it off, turn off notifications, etc. I’ll even work offline so I can clean out the inbox and reply to things, but then don’t have to worry about constant back and forth as people reply real time.

  133. All Het Up About It*

    Oh and that same Organizer also taught me not to use flags and to move any email that needs attention to a task, with a reminder and then file/archive it out of the inbox. I’m not the BEST at that, but when I do follow it, it’s very helpful!

  134. Tom nnn*

    I “fell off the wagon” but the system that makes most sense to me (and that I have not seen listed yet) is called the Stack Method (https://www.stackmethod.com). It has similarities to much of what others have already suggested, but I find the (free, short) videos great for detailing the what and the why of dealing with emails efficiently.

  135. Oh god the emails*

    So many tips here! Email rules never worked for my adhd brain but something I did find helpful once you work out how to skim through the unwieldy influx was working out how to spend less time writing emails – I use text expander a LOT, if you find you get emails that are quite similar/ batches of emails that you could respond generically to at least in part it is a life saver. Previously I had email scripts I could paste in but now I have a suite of ‘snippets’ that produce decent responses with just a few keystrokes and the amount of emails I can respond to immediately in <1 minute increased exponentially. I use it across my Mac/phone/ipad so I can also triage email from my phone more which for some reason is faster for me. (Not a paid endorsement this app just saved me when I was drowning in the email abyss of academia)

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