| How do I manage the flood of emails? | Sort and filter so you see only what you need to see, when you need it. Each email system has its own easy-to-use guide. |
In case you missed it, the Canadian Press had a dire warning: your inbox management is destroying the planet. This is actually old news that “broke” in 2019 and is rooted in analysis going back to 2010.
Here’s the gist: Composing, saving, sending, and reading emails consumes energy. Energy production contributes to climate change. According to the Guardian, ‘If every adult in the UK sent one fewer “thank you” email a day we would save more than 16,433 tonnes of carbon a year – equivalent to 81,152 flights to Madrid or taking 3,334 diesel cars off the road.’
Ergo, your emails are ruining the world. If you’ve been looking for an excuse to slip out from under the tyrannical thumb of your inbox, this may be the excuse for better inbox management. The science is flawed, so you probably shouldn’t quote the study… but our willingness to keep repeating it speaks to a deeper need.
Back in the day, email was the fresh new kid on the communications block. It was a cheap, fast way to transmit information from one place to another. It eliminated the need to print, deliver, or fax your documents to get them into the hands of someone else. The speed and cost-savings that came with email revolutionized nonprofit communications and fundraising.
From your inbox you could send a personal update to every board member or donor at the same time. You could be part of listservs to ask and answer questions amongst your peers. Any person or organization could comment on a policy or communicate with government from any part of the country.
Email brought people who wanted to connect closer together.
Quite a few things have changed over the years, and our love of email is not so unconditional.
For one thing, spam came along — these unwanted emails that flog creams, money laundering opportunities, and other services you definitely don’t need. They invade your inbox, camouflage important messages, and make it harder for nonprofits to get legitimate messages out to the public.
For another thing, email etiquette shifts between peer groups and companies, and some rules never sorted themselves out. Is it truly polite to cc everyone? Should you write detailed messages for easier future reference? Is it better to use an email service to design emails, or send something basic that makes it through the spam filters? No one really knows.
If you need to do strategy, research, planning, or creative work a busy inbox can be disastrous. At some point, we stopped thinking about the ways email helps us communicate with people and started thinking about how we can manage the deluge of messages in our inboxes.
If you’re in outreach, a hectic inbox is probably a good sign. If you manage the inbox for your organization, interact with donors, or manage any kind of community program, then emails are key components of your productivity. On average, people receive 70-100 emails a day at work and send about 40 of their own. As a result, they are inescapable.
Yet, inboxes promote reactivity. There is no prioritization of information, no consistency to the topics, demands, or discourse. Email can send you on an emotional roller coaster or make your mind spin with the onslaught of words. It’s understandable if all the information-processing is tiring.
There are a lot of strategies for managing email. Some people champion inbox zero, while others gave up that battle long ago. Most of us desire to follow up on important messages, respond to constituents, and do the mission work we’re here to do.
If you care about the individual messages but are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of them, these tricks can help.
If you don’t have any rules on your email, this is the place to start. You can archive, tag, sort, or flag messages based on who they come from, their content, or whether you were the only recipient. You don’t have to read every message that arrives or see every message immediately. Decide what’s important, then apply rules to make it happen. [Mail / Gmail / Outlook]
In theory, everyone is a very important person. When it comes to email, only a select few truly need to get through to you immediately. When you set a contact as a VIP, their messages will jump to the top of your inbox and notifications list whether you are in the middle of a media campaign or expecting an important update from a donor. [Mail / Gmail / Outlook]
You can customize your inbox. This is especially helpful if you are trying to focus on a specific task or project. Filter your inbox so it only shows messages from a particular client, relating to a project, messages that are unread, or were sent today. [Mail / Gmail / Outlook]
You don’t need to receive those admin@ or info@ emails forever. If you’re subscribing to a mailing list, you don’t want to give out your personal email address to potential spammers. Use free email aliases instead of your main email account, which makes it easy to filter, re-assign them, re-direct them to other people, or delete them. [Mail / Gmail / Outlook]
Very few people dutifully read and file 100% of their emails. That said, if you want to keep a specific group of messages in one easy-to-find place, you might want a folder. Smart folders use rules to keep your messages together. They also let you “file” the same message in as many folders as you’d like. Use rules to group emails based on subject, sender, tag, keyword, etc. and you can have the best of both worlds. [Mail / Gmail / Outlook ]
Inbox management isn’t the most important challenge of your career … but day-to-day activities stack. Whether it’s your board meeting announcements, a friendly newsletter, or keeping track of applications – email still matters.
If you spend an hour a day on email, that’s about four years of work over the course of your career. Four years is enough time to do some pretty incredible work. Why not take charge?
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