The one thing that lingers on my mind the most is my email backlog. I’m terrible at responding to email as I’d much rather focus my time on product or getting my products into the hands of more users.
When my inbox starts to fill up, it’s almost like a black cloud starts to form and linger inside my head – and the only cure I’ve found is to reach inbox zero.
It’s a horrible feeling and I have seriously considered quitting email as I did with quitting most phone calls in 2015.
That was until today when I come across an interesting approach to managing email using time-based folders instead of subject-based folders.
Instead of having different folders for different projects, you create folders for emails based on how fast you need to deal with them.
These could include Today, This week, This Month or FYI – informational emails that you might want to reference again.
I immediately implemented this using Folders in GMail and after dividing my inbox up I immediately felt 10 times better.
I went from thinking I need to respond to 50+ emails today (which would never happen) to actually realizing I only need to respond to 6.
This is a total game changer and it only takes a few minutes to implement.
If you suffer anxiety when email starts to build up in your inbox like I do, I highly recommend testing this approach out.
