When it was widely adopted, electronic mail revolutionized how work was done. Other means of business communication have come and gone, but email remains a mainstay medium for reaching out and staying in touch.
A relevant question, though, is this: is email providing you with the best methods of performing your communication-related tasks? Is it possible that it’s wasting more time than it’s saving you? Isaac O’Bannon, in his 2010 article “5 Tips for Improving Email Management,” claims that the very technologies that were introduced to increase efficiency have actually become distractions and impediments to productivity in many cases.
Email is meant to help manage communication. Now you have to manage email to manage your communication. How much managing do you want to do daily? How can you best do that? O’Bannon’s number three tip is to utilize foldering techniques. Why does this practice matter?
Imagine for a moment that your inbox and your outbox folders are two drawers in your desk. Every single message that you receive or send is filed in chronological order into these two drawers. Before you know it, you could have thousands of messages to sift through in order to find one that you need. The time spent searching could be used in much more productive ways.
Now, imagine doing it this way: you deal with incoming messages, then file them into folders in drawers in a logical fashion. After sending messages you immediately file those, too. Not only will you be able to more quickly access those messages later, you’ve also turned your email program into a task-management tool. Your specific email folders are folders in the drawers in the desk in our analogy. Your desktop becomes a space where only current messages are stored, until they’ve been addressed. You’ve tidied your communication space, and you’ve given yourself a much cleaner visual of what you need to give attention. Less time and effort can be spent every day on sorting through irrelevant old material.
Many people create email folders based on the person(s) with whom they’re communicating. That works. Personally, I tend away from that and toward folders that are specific to the subject matter of the messaging. For example, I have a folder that is dedicated to all the communications surrounding the renovations we do in our technology classrooms. Every year, I lean heavily into that folder to re-connect with the appropriate vendors, remind myself of precedents that we’ve set, and double-check my work. How you decide to organize is up to you. Organizing away from Inbox and Outbox is key.
Here are some basic instructions for creating a folder system for some of the commonly-used email programs here at Mont Alto:
Outlook:
If using UCS
Open Outlook. Right-click on the UCS folder on the left-hand side of your screen. Left-click on “New folder” to select it from the drop-down menu. Name the folder and click “OK.” Now you can drag and drop messages from your inbox or outbox on top of that folder to move it there.
If not using UCS
Open Outlook. Right-click on the Outlook folder on the left-hand side of your screen. It may be called “Personal Folders” or it may just be called “Outlook.” Left-click on “New folder” to select it from the drop-down menu. Name the folder and click “OK.” Now you can drag and drop messages from your inbox or outbox on top of that folder to move it there.
Webmail:
Log into Webmail through your web browser. Click on the “manage folders” link on the left-hand side of your screen. Enter a name for your new folder in the folder name field and click “create new folder.” Go to your inbox or outbox and place a check mark next to each message that you wish to move to this folder. Select the new folder’s name in the “Move to” drop-down list at the top of the screen. Click the “move” button.
UCS Online (Zimbra):
Log into UCS through your web browser. Make sure that you’re looking at the email section, not calendar or address book, etc. Look for a little folder icon with a bright green plus sign – you should find it to the right of the column heading titled “Folders” above your folder list. Click on the little folder icon. Give your folder a name and click “OK.” Now you can drag and drop messages from your inbox or outbox on top of that folder to move it there.
If you’ve been using email for a while, the initial setting up of folders can seem like a formidable task. Take it step by step. Once you have the hang of it, you can create subfolders, filters to shoot messages straight to certain folders when they hit your inbox, and much, much more. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’d like more instructions or for information about email management best practices.
OBannon, I.,M. (2010). 5 tips for improving email management. CPA Practice Advisor, 20(4), 14-14.
