📬How do you organize your e-mail inbox?

Question

My inbox isn't much different from the average inbox. Upon signing up for various sites, newsletters, and other email lists, my inbox quickly became crowded.

So I'm looking for some tips on organizing my inbox. Hopefully someone can share some tips that would help out everyone!

Jen Fox · Accepted Answer

I like to organise my inbox like I do my daily tasks. The most important stuff at the top and the rest below. We use gmail so labels, stars and flags keep all my topics sorted. I mark anything I don't care to see as spam and delete the rest.

At one time I used tool called Sanebox, it was very helpful for filtering out garbage emails. My only complaint is that the other saneboxes became bloated over time because I never looked at them.

Another helpful tool for me are rules. I'll set rules and triage incoming mail into different folders for reading later. Hope this helps!

Sebastian · Answer

Unread first. That's it.

Brenna Donoghue · Answer

@jennifersafox Wow, seriously impressed by how organized your inbox is!

Brenna Donoghue · Answer

I used to organize emails into folders based on subjects... and frankly I ended up with too many folders and it was hard to find cross-subject emails.

I've since simplified my folders to:
1. Inbox
2. Today (reply/action today)
3. This week (reply/action this week)
4. This month (reply/action this month)
5. FYI (where most end up) 
 
In this way, they're organized as to-dos and easily searchable. And I delete anything that doesn't seem long-term important.

Stephen · Answer

I use a program called gnus for Emacs, which I will not recommend to anyone here.

Gnus allows you to assign a score to an email based on any criteria that you can come up with. Content in the subject line, in the body, maybe the sender? I then assign a colour to each email depending on the score and have a hierarchy of which colours I should tackle first.

The goal is that all incoming emails are scored and coloured but that's unachievable, so I'm happy with this affecting ~80%.

Raphael Salaja · Answer

@jennifersafox @brenna_donoghue This is truly amazing stuff, thanks for the tips

Raphael Salaja · Answer

@brenna_donoghue Thank you for these tips.

Aliaksandr Kandratsiuk · Answer

In my outlook I organised emails into folders based on subjects. Until today it works. I realised here that I wont be working as soon as I have many amount of folders and it will be difficult to find and managed it. Also don't keep emails I really don't need.

Rich Watson · Answer

Gmail has labels that I use to help organize. Still a complete mess though, I just start important stuff or mark it as unread to keep it at the top. 🤣😂🤣

Aliaksandr Kandratsiuk · Answer

@1988seb If you need to find some emails how you manage it? I see you don't sort emails)

Jen Fox · Answer

@brenna_donoghue @raf_underscore Thank you. No worries! the important thing is to do what works for you. :)

Raphael Salaja · Answer

@jonathanm Interesting, I'll be sure to check it out

Raphael Salaja · Answer

@qudsia_ali I see, it's easier to clean up when everything is separated.

Raphael Salaja · Answer

@1988seb Simple, and easy

Jonathan Massabni · Answer

My favorite one so far : "Inbox Zero". 
it's a different approach but works well.
It's basically keeping the inbox empty at all times to avoid confusing it with a "to-do" list!

📬How do you organize your e-mail inbox?

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