mark your emails

Just read that email, maybe fired an initial answer (not the worst thing to do) and now this email is "unmarked" as "read" in your inbox so you won't find/remember it in 30 minutes time?

I certainly know or rather knew this problem because this helps me cope with it:

Mark your email

By "mark" I mean use things like Flags, Categories, Tag's or whatever your email tool (includes online mail services) offers you to highlight mails which require further action.

Find what's best for yourself but even a basic "flagging" usually helps you get quite far. For example mark (flag, categorize, label) every mail that you have read, and which requires your attention again later on (tasks, replies, informations etc).

Here's some ideas about how to do it in various tools:

MS Outlook 2003

Your basic "flagging collection" consists of six differently colored "flags". Fastest way to flag an email in your inbox is right clicking and selecting "Zur Nachverfolgung" *) and then select one of the colored flags. 

In order to sort your inbox according to flags, right-click on the column titles in your inbox view, and add the flag-column (usually features a small flag as symbol). If you sort based on this column, all flagged emails will be shown top-most where they hover within your ran

ge of view each time you open the inbox.

Two seconds of work, but minutes and a lot of embarrassement saved for forgotten mails.

* : anybody knows what this is called in the English version of Outlook?

MS Outlook 2007

Same basics as with Outlook 2003 but flags are completely free to define. Use the o

nes provided or create your own. The basics' the same only in this new version of Outlook, the concept of "flags" and "categories" has merged (see upcoming post about using categories). You'll get the hang of it.

GMail

Quite a powerful online application, GMail offers so called "Labels" with which you can mark any number of mails.

The main difference to client software is, that you don't acutally "sort" based on the label, but you select a "view" which shows you all mails with the appropriate label.

To select such a view, GMail usually displays a box "Labels" on the left hand side". 

How do you use flags, labels, categories and other such stuff? Let us know your comments.

turn off any email notification

Your inbox is getting out of control and more mails are still coming in? Quite many probably know about this problem and there are many solutions out there.

You'll find some of the solutions that work best for me here soon. And let me know about your solutions and opinions.

Turn your email notification off!

Yes, correctly. Ignore these mails for a given amount of time. All the notifications only distract you from dealing with your current task. Let the emails be were they are. No one sends you an email if its reeeeally urgent (=life threatening) or needs an immediate reply within the next few minutes.

Try out what works best for you. Some check their inbox once or twice a day (morning or evening), others once every hour and others after they have finished a (self-assigned) task.

You're in charge of the inbox, not the other way round.