The topic of this post may sound basic, but every single person I know has a very serious email problem. They can't answer the messgaes coming in, their boxes are clogged, and they feel constantly behind because of the barrage of messages. And this is emphatically without spam--most filters are good enough these days that we're not overwhelmed with Viagra pitches any more.

And yet legitimate business emails alone now leave most of us completely verklempt.

Asynchronous communications is wonderful. I'd much rather receive an email, which I can answer thoughtfully and on my own time, than a voicemail, which beckons to me urgently from my desk phone. Actually, as far as phones go, I'm ready to give them up altogether--the landline at my house is never used; my cell phone has an erratic charging history (I blame it on the charger cord); and my desk phone only betides woe, most of the time. I think most of us under the age of forty feel the same way; and yet we're irresponsible with our email most of the time.

The most important thing to remember about business email--and the point you should keep in mind if you follow this process--is that ALL business email you would ever need to keep or refer back to will fall into one of three caregories:

• Informational/Reference: This includes attachments, data, decisions, copy people have written, etc: anything that will be used later for a purpose or may need to be referred to when trying to trace an historical thread of some kind.
• To-dos for you: Other emails are asking you to decide, attend, or accomplish something now or in the future.
• To-dos for other people: The final set of emails ask someone else (the sender or a third party) to decide or accomplish something now or in the future.

Email that doesn't fall into one of these three categories can be immediately archived or deleted out of hand.

So, in an effort to help everyone get control of their communications, here are my tried and true tips.

BEFORE YOU START: If you have more than 400 emails in your inbox, you need to go through a cleanup, following the rules below. It will probably take you the better part of a day. However, I hope this list will help you avoid *ever* having more than 400 emails in your inbox again.

1. First, ask yourself "Is the folder structure on my computer working for me?" If it is, great, proceed to step 2. If it's not, ask yourself why. For those of us in client service, it's easy: we have client folders by client name and then project name beneath, internal folders, personal folders. For the rest of you, I recommend thinking about your internal contacts or projects as "clients" and setting up individual folders for each endeavor. You can and should archive those folders later, but for anything active, keep it on the top level.
   
2. Set up your inbox to mimic, exactly, the documents folder which is working for you on your hard drive or network--but don't go more than 2 levels down. In other words, if you have a subfolder of documents which is MyClient/Project1/InformationAcrchitecture/Drafts, in your inbox only create the folders MyClient and InformationArchitecture (if that). (However, don't filter things into folders automatically unless you're an extraordinarily motivated person. Out of sight is out of mind.) The taxonomy of inboxes should be far coarser than that of document storage, simply because quite frankly you're only keeping these emails "just in case." This brings me to point 3:
3. Your email boxes are not, should not, and cannot be adequate storage for files or essential communication. Therefore, if anyone ever, ever sends you an attachment or information in text which ought to be kept, SAVE IT RIGHT AWAY. (Of course I do not recommend opening attachments from unknown sources and yadda yadda, but you get the idea.) Look, we all from time to time say "I know you sent me that, let me look at my email" simply because the email search mechanisms are better than file search mechanisms--they date-stamp and all that. But the fact is, you have fewer files than you have emails. It's a one-second operation to save the stupid file, so do it--then you have two places to find it later on. Furthermore, I've noticed that nothing makes other people more impatient than not having a file on hand. It makes you look disorganized, even if you're actually not. (Get an indexing service on your hard drive like Google Desktop. Yes, it slows you down, but if you truly can't commit to good file management, email is *not* the answer. Indexing is better.)
4. If you receive an email which is only valid immediately, delete it. This includes: automated notifications of any kind (you'll get them in your queue later), group or all@ emails (unless you want to look at a link someone sent later, which I will go into more detail about), personal emails, one-second answers you've replied to immediately, vacation notifications, etc.
5. Back to your filing system. Remember the three kinds of emails above? Well, they each have to be dealt with in their own way. Information and reference emails need to be stored for later use. These can go directly into your subfolders once you have replied or the thread of conversation is complete, so put them there now or right when you receive them. You'll be able to find them more easily in the subfolder than in the big mess of an inbox. (You've already dealt with attachments, so much of the information will live in your documents folder.) To-dos for other people can also go directly into your subfolders once you've replied, because you're just waiting for someone to take action and either provide you with information or further tasks and decisions.
   
6. The third kind of email--to dos for YOU--are the ones that trip most of us up. Hopefully by this point, you've cleared out the dreck (or, if you manage your email in an ongoing way in this manner, you won't have much dreck to begin with.) You'll be left with an inbox which is essentially like a tasklist. I recommend using a task list program as well (like the one in Outlook) but even if you scribble your to-do list on post it notes, here is where it gets critical. First of all, use the flagging system in your email client. Anything that you need to address in the next seven days, but cannot get to immediately, flag it. Then every day, sort your email by the flag field and go through them. Move the ones you've dealt with to the subfolders. The ones you haven't dealt with, PUT THE TASK ON YOUR TO DO LIST and move the email to a subfolder. Once the task described in the email lives on your tasklist, it's no longer needed as a reminder in your inbox. The rest of your emails--which should now be all to-dos for you, remember--you can sort easily and address one by one. Some emails may remain in your inbox which are not strictly "tasks for you" because you're having a discussion with a group--but once the thread is complete and a decision has been made, move them. You can also deal with this by reading the emails and putting an item on your tasklist "think about the problem that Mary sent to me and reply" and move the whole previous thread immediately, if the ball is in your court. The goal is to separate, immediately upon receipt, things you need to deal with now, things you need to deal with later, and get those things onto an easily scanned list and out of your inbox.
7. Finally, a note about subject lines. Sometimes sorting by person name is not convenient for moving emails into subfolders. because people are involved with more than one project. So come up with a subject-line system that works for you. Prepend your subject lines with words that match your folder structure: e.g., "Re: Smith Account: Waiting on Jim." Use it consistently. You can't make other people do the same, so occaisionally you'll still be faced with impossible-to-sort subjects like "Re: Huh?" and "Re: Waiting for feedback", but as your system takes hold, people will reply to you with your subject and it will make it a whole lot easier to sort later on.

By following these tips, I have managed to feel in control of my email--and I receive up to 200 business-related emails a day. Once I started thinking about these emails in an abstract way: what does this email represent in terms of my to-do list? I was much better positioned to filter them instantly and keep my inbox clean. I think we all too often rely on our technology to do a job best suited to our brains--there's not a filter in the world intelligent enough to really sort our emails, and furthermore, if we rely on the technology, we will miss important items that we really do need to address. But instituting a few simple policies--rules for oneself that don't require much thought--can generate huge results in terms of organization.