Why You Should Never Leave Email in Your Inbox

Is your inbox jam-packed full of emails?  How far down do you have to scroll before you get to the last message?  Do you use a series of flags and stars to highlight certain ones?

​Email overload is a problem that so many of us suffer from. Fortunately, there is a better (and easier) way to handle the onslaught of messages we receive each day.

In this short video, Scott Friesen explains how to manage your messages by moving completed email out of your inbox.  Because an inbox is where emails start their lives.  It shouldn’t be where they go to die.

Video transcript:

I've got a question for you and it's about mail. Not email, but physical mail. You know: envelopes, postage stamps, that type of thing.

When was the last time you went to your mailbox and took out every single envelope, opened it up, read the contents of every single letter, and then carefully folded them back up, placed them back into their envelope and then shoved it all back into your mailbox?

No? Never? You've never done that before? Of course not!  It sounds ridiculous.  However, if I was to ask you the exact same question about your email inbox, I assume many of you would say yes.

Too many of us complain about how hard it is to manage our email inbox.  But we tend to do it to ourselves. We leave all of our messages, both those replied to or responded to, in our inbox. As a result, it's very difficult for us to decipher as to which message should we pay attention to next. “Did I already reply to that? I think I did. Let me go open it up again” and we waste time and energy in the process.  There is a much better and simpler way.

Use the archive function with your email client. When you're finished with an email, archive it. You can always go back and search it later. But it will no longer clutter up your inbox. If you want to be able to reply to an email but maybe you don't have time right now, create a reply-to folder. You can put those messages in a separate folder knowing that you can go back to it and reply to them one by one but yet it won't clutter up your inbox.

You see it's called an inbox for a reason. It's where emails start their lives, it shouldn't be where they go to die. So make use of a separate folder or make use of the archive function.  When you're finished with an email, get it out of the inbox. It's very simple.