E-Mail Disorganization

[Note to readers–this is not about programming. This is about e-mail management for those who are a bit shaky with the computer.]

There’s an interesting article in the Washington Post about e-mail, and the way it’s getting the better of many people. As a disorganized person who has trouble with correspondence in any case, I can certainly understand this problem.

The big problem I notice offices have with computers is that they let you do things more efficiently, and they often make it hard to clean up afterward. You may be shocked that I regard doing things more efficiently as a problem. But I do mean precisely that. If your work habits are sloppy, a computer will help you get in a bigger tangle much faster. I know one person who regularly buys newer, faster, computers in the hope that these faster machines will help him work more efficiently. Despite constant upgrading, he never can seem to complete what he wants to get done. Why? Because the same things that get him distracted in the first place now happen faster.

Similarly criminal activity can be enhanced by the computer. The scams are much the same, but they can be carried out faster and catch more people. Sexual predators use the computer to make contacts faster. Unfortunately we often miss the opportunities to catch such people much more quickly as well.

If you received physical correspondence at the speed you receive e-mail, and then placed that e-mail in one large in-box, which you attacked haphazardly every once in a while, your regular correspondence would get out of hand. If you do the same thing with e-mail, you will get the same result.

The solution? Simple. Just as you would with physical correspondence, decide on priorities for what you will handle. Divide your e-mail into folders for the appropriate items and create rules or filters to separate it automatically. How? That’s where your help file comes in.

People complain to me all the time about how difficult it is to do certain things on the computer. Invariably, I find that they haven’t read their manuals or their help files. They are sometimes not even aware that they exist. There is no substitute for taking a couple of hours and learning the basic functions of your software. This means not diving into your work and then trying to figure things out a step at a time, but rather setting aside a little bit of time and learning the basic functions. That time will save you enormous amounts of time down the road.

For me, for example, I need to divide my incoming mail into three levels of priority. If your e-mail to me falls into the third priority level, I probably will never answer it. I simply do not have time to deal with everything I get. That little “Priority 3” folder under my inbox generally just gets emptied every month or so. I’ve found that my 1st and 2nd priority stuff I do generally manage to look at, though occasionally I look at priority 2 e-mail and drop it to priority 3 where it’s never heard from again.

Beyond that, I get numerous newsletters and alerts I’ve subscribed to. Each time I get the first message from a new list I create a filter (I use Thunderbird) which puts the newsletters in a folder I designate. That way I never have to deal with them in my inbox. I look at them only when I want information on that particular issue.

A small amount of time spent organizing your e-mail will do wonders in time saved down the road.