The Monster waiting for you in your Inbox!

How do you
conquer it?
How do you manage your work email?
By Vaijayanthi K Madabushi
One of the most cumbersome tasks in our work life is sifting through the thousands of email we get
every day. You try to stay on top of your Inbox, attend to the tasks and breathe a sigh of relief every
evening but kaboom you have another thousand waiting for you the next day when you wake up. You go
through the same routine sure but pretty quickly, either they pile up or you will get bored of it and
decide to let them be. Soon, one fine day, when you decide to take it easy or god forbid you take a
vacation you have the million legged monster lying in wait for you.
And this monster will attack you from the sneakiest of places
Oh, you didnt see the mail asking for contribution to Rams birthday party?
What? Are you telling me you never got my email? I wanted that report yesterday!
How come you never attended the All Hands? You got an award!
That nails it. That last one that especially nails it. You cant let this happen. You cant let this monster
win! So how you do handle it then? How do you win?
Easy! Think of it as a game. You are the Ninja and the monster iswell, the monster. You need to kill
them all and come out of the game unscathed. It can be done but it needs a little ninja cleverness and
you need to follow some rules. Easy peacy, isnt it?
Now, for the rules:
1. Your goal should be to keep as few emails as possible in your Inbox. This is the game really.
2. Make your Inbox your To do List: Keep all your 'to do' or 'to respond' emails in your inbox till
you have actioned them completely. If you are waiting to obtain more information, or simply get
some time to respond, let the email stay in your inbox. But do make sure you send an
acknowledgement to the sender (in as few words as possible like 'will do', 'expect my reply by
date', or even a 'will respond') so that you can prevent a reminder. Warning: The more the email
sulks here, the more your Life shall drain.
3. Mark the emails you want to action as Unread. The only other emails in your Inbox should be
the ones where you are just monitoring the progress. The quicker you slay the monster babies,
the better for you.
4. Never let a Friday go by without doing a dust and clean of your inbox. At the end of each week,
your aim should be to not let more than 10 emails spill onto next week's actions. That way, you
will still have a Life left.
5. Create appropriate folders for all the emails that come to you as FYI or where you are marked in
Cc and move them as soon as you have read them.

6. Don't forget to enjoy the thrill and joy of slaying actioned emails to their respective folders.
7. Create an alerts folder for all the automated emails that are triggered by your organizations
departments or other systems. Now create a rule and make sure incoming emails automatically
go into these folders. Don't however forget to check these emails once in a while just in case
something that requires your action sneaks in. Like for instance your claim rejection!
8. Try to shift delete emails that you will never ever need to see again in this lifetime. Like those
birthday wishes. Personally though I never shift delete. I reserve it for my special 'Delete folder
spring clean' that I do once in six months. You know, just in case you need some mail. Take a
call. However dont let junk get onto your folders. They can drain your life.
9. Always archive mails older than 1 year. Set up your auto archive settings accordingly. This will
also ensure your pst size is manageable and in case of a crash, you will at least have to
something to fall back on.
10. Now something on Folder management:

Add serial numbers in front of folder names in your order of preference so that your most
important or favorite or most 'trafficked' folder sits right under your inbox. Easier to drag and
drop all those FYIs and actioned emails.

Create one folder for each of the projects you are in charge of

Go on and create sub folders under folders to bring in more order

Create a folder for your most important information or frequently 'referred' items like your
password resets, insurance logins, system login, contact numbers, process mailers, etc. so that
you can locate them easily

Similarly create a folder for all the organizational level mailers like News and Announcements

And one more folder for the communications you receive from external domains like
newsletters, subscriptions, etc. (which you never read anyway!)

Separate your subordinate related emails, queries, resolutions into its own folder including
resumes, appraisal related things, etc.

Create a Personal and Private (if you want) folder as well so that all YOUR appraisal,
Compensation letters, training mandates, etc can be moved into Personal. And the rare mails
you get from friends to your office ids can be moved into Private.

There, you play by these rules (and invent more as you play) and soon you shall be crowned the Ninja
unconquered.
So what do you think? Are there any must-rules this Ninja should be following?