Top Tips for a Organised Email

Just like how mess around the house can stress us out, an untidy inbox can cause great distress, too.

Are your unread messages in their thousands? Does it take you half an hour to find an email from yesterday? Are you deleting half of your emails before even opening them?

If yes, then give this blog a read. After all, an organised email is a must if you truly want to be organised at home and at work.

Don’t use it as a chat service

In this day and age, we have so many quick ways to keep in touch with people, like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and texting. You don’t need to be using your email for social messages.

Keep your email purely professional and don’t be tempted to use it as a way of saying hi to your friends. Doing this will help cut the amount of emails you receive drastically, helping you to stay on top of your inbox.

Be wary of spam

If you’re anything like me, then you will spend most of your time deleting emails you haven’t even bothered to open. These are likely to be offers from shops you’ve used, or websites you’ve accidentally signed up to.

Take the time to move these pesky emails to your spam box, so they don’t overcrowd your inbox.

As well as this, it may be a good idea to have a separate email for this purpose. Keep your professional email separate, and when a shop assistant asks for your email, give them the separate one you don’t bother looking at. That way, offers won’t be muddled up with important work emails, helping you to stay much more organised.

Turn off social notifications

You may notice that every time you get a message on Facebook, or  every time someone retweets you, you get an email.

Not only does this clog up your inbox, it also has the potential to cause huge distraction, stopping you from focussing on your work.

There’s a simple answer to this. Turn the email notifications off. If they’re not in your email, you won’t be tempted to click on them during work. Once again, your email will have one less thing in it distracting you from what’s important.

Take small actions daily

Many of us get into the habit of looking at our emails without taking any action. Sometimes we will scan it without even bothering to open any of the messages. And then we act surprised when we suddenly have thousands of emails to sift through.

Why not spend a tiny bit of time on your email every day? Deal with the emails as and when they come in, opening them, reading them, then deciding if you want to delete, reply or flag them.

That way, you won’t be giving your inbox the chance to get on top of you. By organising it as you go, you will end up with the minimum amount of emails, that are easy to search through.

Create labels

Many email services have inbuilt tools to help organise emails. Make the most of these. For example, Gmail allows you to create labels to filter your emails through. This means you won’t receive so many emails to your inbox, and you’ll be able to find important mail easily.

Using labels means you can have all emails from your boss going to a separate folder. You can also use the colour coded system to differentiate between different emails, such as which ones contain payments, or which ones include attachments.

Making use of this filtering system will automatically clean up your inbox, making it less overloaded and easier to manage.

So there’s no need for your email to overwhelm you anymore. Follow those simple steps to ensure your email is tidier, more organised, easier to search through, and causes you far less stress at work.

Rosie Fitzgerald is a freelance journalist, who studied English Literature and Creative Writing at UEA and has previously been published by The Tab, Babe and The Guardian.

Inspiring Interns is a recruitment agency specialising in all the internships and graduate jobs London has to offer.