How to Get a Handle On Your Email Inbox

As a Virtual Assistant, having an email inbox that’s out of control can be very stressful – and keeping it clean can feel like a full-time job. In this episode of The RocketGirl Show, I'll explain step by step how to clean up and manage your inbox.

TRANSCRIPT

I’m Belinda Wasser, also known as RocketGirl, and today we are going to talk about how to get a handle on your email inbox.

When you’re a Virtual Assistant, your email inbox can easily get out of control. However, it's one of the most important places in your business because it's how your clients communicate with you and very often how work comes into your workflow. So, you want to do a really good job of keeping it clean.

Today, I'm going to talk about a few tips for getting a handle on your email inbox and keeping it in good shape. So the first thing I want to talk about is archiving. Now I know what the tendency a lot of times is to delete the emails that we don't need.

However, this is how I want you to think about your inbox I want you to think about it as a place where you only keep actionable items that you either need to respond to or there's a work request inside. So what I do is I archive everything else so that my inbox is clean and I can navigate around and get to my client work. However, since I've archived it and not deleted it I can go back at any time and see the emails that I've decided to put into the archive.

The second thing I want you to think about is creating folders and thinking about the structure for the folders so I have one folder. It's called a label in Gmail but it looks like a folder. So we'll call it that I  create one called ‘Clients’ and then I have a folder on a subfolder under that for each of my clients with their first it's called their first name and their last name so I don't get fancy and use you know their company name and some and their first and last name and others.

I also don't organize my client emails by project it's just a very simple system that you know. So I always know where everything is. So create folders but don't go too crazy and also don't keep emails that you don't need to refer to again. It's really important that these folders not be you know jammed full of every email they've ever sent you. I would say on average I probably only save one or two client emails in these folders probably a month so think about you know, is this the best place for the information?

I have another folder that's called ‘fingertips’. And in that fingertip folder I will put things like, if I place an online order for a book or some something else. I'll put the receipt in there so I can track it. A train ticket or information that I know I need to refer to in a short period of time, but that's going to expire.

So for example if there was information from my daughter's school about moving in to her dorm. I put that in the fingertip folder because I need to keep it close at hand. But I don't need to keep it forever so it doesn't need to go in a folder specifically for her.

When you're working with your emails I want you to do something that I call 'lumping'. So here's how you lump so let's say I'm going to sit down and I'm going to work on all of Diane's work and I'm going to clear up, you know, everything that's hanging out there for her.

The first thing I'll do is I'll go over into my Gmail and I'll type in her email address and then the word label colon inbox and so what that does is it takes all of the emails that are in my inbox for Diane and by virtue of the fact they're in my inbox. They're actionable right so it's not everything. It's just those things in my inbox and then I work my way through them one at a time. So that way, I'm not missing anything and I'm not looking for emails from Diane in my inbox. So that's a nice way to lump.  

You can also do that in outlook and other email applications. So you just sort by the email address and then let the application know that you only want those things in the inbox, very handy.

Okay, So it's highly possible that a few of you who are watching this have email inboxes that are totally out of control. So, I'm going to show you right now how to stop the bleeding. So the first thing I want you to do is I want you to create a folder. Call the folder something that's meaningful to you it could be as simple as emails before whatever the date is. Then, I want you to take everything in your inbox except for the last month or two depending on what kind of you know what kind of work you do.

And is there possibly something in your inbox that's two months old that you have to take action on and I want you to move all of them over to that folder you created. The tendency is to try to make your email inbox perfect because you're waiting for that moment when you're going to have probably a million hours because it's going to take a long time to make it perfect.  

So what we're going to do is what I call stop the bleeding. So take all the old emails put them in that folder. You still have them. They're still the same smeary mess you've been living with for years but this way we're getting a handle on your inbox. Okay so I want you to go through the emails that are in your inbox and take out everything that does not require your action or you to reply. And archive them in the archive folder that comes with whatever software you're using then you have something to work with you can go through there and just lump them by client and do the work but you really want to try to stop the bleeding and don't worry about that old folder you know the folder that you're creating with the old emails because at some point it will just kind of be unnecessary.

And if there's something in there that you find and you keep referring to or refer to even more than once. Put it in the right folder so you'll be able to find it so kind of a pro tip is I already mentioned that I was thinking about the fingertips so but this is a pro tip too.

Unsubscribe right we have the power to unsubscribe from emails that we don't need. so if there's something that you bought and now all of a sudden they think they're you know your new best friend and they keep sending you all these emails you know where to find them if you need something you know if your favorite shoe designer is sending you emails every day maybe it's time to just unsubscribe from that. So that you're not tripping on it all the time.

So make your email inbox a wonderful clean place for you to do your work and to be more efficient. So before we  leave I just want to invite you all to my free online classroom. It's called The Virtual Assistant Connection. We are over on Facebook and you can find us by typing The Virtual Assistant Connection in the space in the search box at the top of Facebook and then click the join button. We'd love to have you.

The Facebook group has almost 9 000 members. It's a like bustling fabulous friendly supportive  community where we all help each other, whether we're just starting out on our journey as a Virtual Assistant or we've been one for a long time like me. So come on over there and you'll see videos and all kinds of articles to help you with your journey until next time I'm Belinda, signing off bye-bye.