My e-mail habits

Kishore C.S. (July 2001)

I have been using e-mail account for more than 7 years now. Like everyone I also found handling e-mail a tough task and over years I attempted to improve the way I deal with e-mail. E-mail overload is a new form of "traditional paper overload". With many of us handling more than 100 e-mails per day, I am sure everyone has their own ways of sorting e-mail. I just wanted to share a few of my methods so that they can be of use to you, if you are having this "e-mail overload problem"

1. Sorting e-mail as it arrives

I sort my e-mail using rules into three categories Top Priority, Medium Priority, Low Priority. I have created rules using following formula

a. All mails with my name in "To" list will be Top Priority. I read the mail immediately and respond as I am mainly responsible for the mail sent and I should take action immediately.

b. All mails with my name in "cc" will be Medium Priority. I read the subject and postpone for later reading. I read it immediately if I am not busy with some other task

c. All mails that don't have my name in either "To" or "cc" will move to "Low Priority". This typically includes mails to internal mailing lists/groups or sent with Bcc option. I choose to read it or not and just delete it.

2. Separate accounts for Personal and Official Mail

I use Yahoo account for all personal e-mails and don't give out my office mail to friends/relatives. I read personal mails once/twice a day and read all mails in a half an hour time frame during lunch hour and/or after 6 pm when I free myself from work routine. I don't read personal mails as it arrives. This helps me to concentrate on work. With direct internet connection available at work, I configured my outlook express to read my yahoo mail which saves me a lot of time in processing my e-mail. I am able to manage my e-mail better after I stopped using web for reading e-mail

3. Archiving mails

I archive mails by timeline. I create one folder for each month and move mails from Inbox to corresponding month as soon as possible. I found this very efficient. When I need to trace a mail, first I try to recollect which month it was and then use find option OR by tracing who has sent using Grouping option. I can trace a mail within a minute many times. I check old months mails on a monthly basis and delete mails I feel will not be needed permanently. I found that very rarely did I need to look up a mail. But I do find a need to store some of the mail which is around 20-30 mails per month.

Summary

Get control of your life by being good at managing e-mail overload. If you have found a better use it consistently. If you find what I suggested may work better, try it out. You can also read some related articles.

Managing the e-mail explosion http://www.pcworld.com/news/article.asp?aid=18324

Ten Commandments of e-mail http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,10306,00.asp

e-mail etiquette: http://www.learnthenet.com/english/html/65mailet.htm