My inbox zero method
I've noticed that it takes my colleagues ages to find a specific email, because they leave absolutely everything in the inbox, treating it as a giant unsorted archive and to-do list.
My method is to leave nothing in the inbox (for longer than it takes for me to pop it in another folder).
I have 3 main folders:
- To do: emails that require me to do something.
- FYI: emails that don't require me to do something but I might wish to refer to later. (Anything from the 'to do' folder gets moved here once I've completed it.)
- Don't care: emails that don't involve me at all (things that my department is CC'd in, for example), but I'll still have them available to dig out if anyone asks 'Did you see that email from Fergus?'
As soon as something arrives in the inbox, I bung it in one of those folders. (I have Outlook quick actions set up so I can do it at the click of a button.) I used to have multiple 'to do' folders, for things to do today, things to do this week, and things to do this month/quarter. I've stopped bothering with that because I realised having them all in one folder is easier for me.
I also have a few more folders for automatically shunting automated reports into. Plus I subscribe to things via RSS instead of emails where possible, so I don't get those email alerts mixed in with my normal work emails.