Email Sorting Strategies Over Time

From a Consultant Neurosurgeon in the UK: "I just spent 2 hours answering emails." "At the end, I had more unread emails in my inbox than when I started." Emails are a necessary part of our job. But through my online coaching with doctors and surgeons, I see the same pattern being repeated: - Drip-feeding emails throughout the day. - Anxiety about the number of unread emails. - Building a reputation of being "email responsive" (and so getting more emails). With more and more doctors getting burnt out from piling admin work, here are a few strategies to manage your emails. 1. Unsubscribe from any automated trust emails you never read. This cuts your inbox number by about a third off the bat. 2. Create folders to organise emails instead of leaving them to sit in your inbox. Folder titles can be: reference; Friday review; patients waiting for surgery; done by the end of the week; or research projects. Your imagination is the limit here. Use what works for you. *Folders such as "Friday review" only work if you actually review them every Friday. 3. Time block 2-3 hours over a week to process your inbox. Don't open your emails because you're sitting at your desk or are bored. And don't open your emails unless you are prepared to do step 4. 4. Touch emails once. Once an email is opened there are 3 outcomes. - Delete. - Move to your calendar as a meeting, or to a reference file from step 2. - Reply. If you reply, be conscious that writing an email is the main source of receiving emails, which is more work for you. So aim to write concluding emails that end the chain. Following this, once an email is opened it doesn't get opened again. It gets processed and so only "touched once". 5. There is no such thing as an "urgent email". Emails by definition are not time-critical. No one will die if you don't check your inbox. So don't treat them like they are. 6. Don't email at home. This blurs work/home barriers. You wouldn't call your children's school to "check what's happening" during an operation. So why is it OK to check in with work when you're at home with your family? If you follow steps 1-5 your inbox will be under control and you won't need to think about them at home. Remember. Email is triage. Not work. What systems do you use to keep your inbox under control? Please share them in the comments. I'm always open to new ideas.

Ever had 2,000+ emails in your inbox? Yeah, that hurts. When I started my first job, I treated my work email like my personal inbox. I’d read an email, reply if needed, and then let it sit there—sometimes I’d delete spam, sometimes I’d just leave it. Before I knew it, I had thousands of emails piling up. One day, my manager walked by, saw my screen, and lost it. He told me I needed to get that inbox sorted out—and fast. It was a total nightmare. 😅 A cluttered inbox and a chaotic calendar can ruin your entire day before it even starts. In engineering, staying organized isn’t just about being neat—it’s about making sure nothing slips through the cracks. Here’s how I turned my email from a major pain into my best tool for staying on top of tasks. 1️⃣ Start Fresh: Clear your inbox every morning. The goal? Only leave emails that need action. Everything else? File or delete. 2️⃣ Prioritize: Go through your emails and figure out what’s urgent. How long will it take to respond? Then, prioritize based on what needs to be done today. 3️⃣ Take Action: Tackle the most pressing emails first. Once you’ve handled one, file it into the right folder. 4️⃣ Folder System: I create folders for each project (and categories like business development, HR, and standards). Special Folders: Waiting on Response: For emails that I need to follow-up on. Review As Time Allows: For those “I’ll get to it later” emails. 5️⃣ File, Don’t Forget: The key to keeping things organized is filing emails right after you read or respond to them. Calendar Tips to Stay on Track: 📅 Add Project Deadlines as all-day "tentative" events. 📅 Send Calendar Invites for pre-planned calls 📅 Sync Personal & Work Calendars for a complete view of your day. These systems have saved me from countless headaches and helped me stay on top of projects and deadlines. 👉 How do you keep your inbox and calendar under control? Drop your tips in the comments!

Executive: “My inbox is out of control.” Assistant: “Say less. I’ve got a plan.” If your executive’s inbox looks like a digital black hole of unread messages, never-ending CCs, and urgent requests buried under newsletter subscriptions, you’re not alone. But if you are working with a strategic lens, you’re not just here to “check emails.” You’re here to build a system that makes their inbox WORK FOR THEM. So, when an executive drops the “My inbox is a mess” bomb, here’s how a next-level assistant responds: Step 1: Set the Rules of Engagement Before touching a single email, ask: ➡️ What actually requires your eyes, and what can I handle? ➡️ Who are your VIPs, and who gets a same-day response no matter what? ➡️ What’s your preferred communication style—daily summaries, flagging urgent emails, or handling 80% of it so you only see the top 20%? If they don’t have clear answers, guess what? You create the system for them. Step 2: Automate, Filter, and Declutter The goal? Inbox Zen. ✅ Set up VIP folders. So high-priority emails don’t drown in the noise. ✅ Use rules & filters. Newsletters, FYIs, and non-urgent emails? Sorted automatically. ✅ Create canned responses. If they’re constantly typing the same replies, save that time! Step 3: Control the Chaos with an Inbox Routine No more inbox panic at 4 PM. Put a system in place: 🔹 Morning: Quick scan for what’s urgent? What can be delegated? 🔹 Midday: Check-in for any new priorities? 🔹 End of day: Review unanswered emails, summarize key items, prep for tomorrow. Step 4: Train Your Executive to Trust the Process Your exec needs to know: If you’re managing the inbox, they don’t have to. Show them the system works by keeping them focused on what actually matters. Over time, they’ll stop drowning in emails and you become the secret weapon behind their inbox sanity. Remember, you’re protecting their time, ensuring priorities don’t get lost, and making sure their inbox serves them and not the other way around. I want to hear it. Drop your best tips below for taming a wild inbox! 👇🏽 #evolvedassistant #administrativeassistant #executivesupport #administrativeprofessional #executiveassistant

Had a conversation about being a zero-inboxer, and thought I'd share my strategies for maintaining a "zero" inbox. 1. "Zero" means non-scrollable inbox. There's no way I'll ever have a truly empty inbox. 2. Treat emails left in the inbox as a todo list. These should be relatively quick hit items that you can get to when you have a bit of free time. 3. If something will take longer than 15 minutes, schedule a blocker on your calendar with the title of the email, and archive the email. When the calendar item comes up, go find the email, and complete the task. (Some systems will let you turn emails into calendar items - do that if possible.) 4. Don't end the day with a scrollable inbox. If it's still scrollable, make calendar items and archive. 5. Once it's done, archive it (don't delete). Be done with it. Let the archive be your knowledge base. 6. Create rules to tuck away any emails which are things you may need to reference later but aren't actually important on a day-to-day basis (like many emails from DLs). 7. Minimal folders. Really. I find folders just make it harder to find emails, and then I need to make decisions on which folder I should put an item into. I used to do "virtual" folders (ones based on search), but found they didn't really help. Which leads me to... 8. Become good at search. It's much easier to craft a search string than it is to poke around at which folder might have an email. 9. Archive old emails after returning from a break lasting longer than a week. (I've talked about this in the past) 10. Don't be afraid to declare email bankruptcy. If you have 1,500 emails in your inbox, it's time to admit you're never going to get to them. Archive them and start fresh. You'll literally never dig out of a hole like that. If it's really important, they'll email again. And if they haven't, and it's been more than 3 weeks, I think everyone has already admitted the task involved in the email (even if it's just replying) isn't happening and has moved on.

People often celebrate the cult of “inbox zero” but don’t explain why it actually matters or how to do it. After many years of working at it - here is where I have ended up. WHY EVEN TRY? The speed of the flow of (quality) information around an organisation is incredibly important. Founders are often the worst bottleneck for this flow – with our various inboxes (across email, Slack, Notion, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, etc) being the places where this information can pile up. Therefore, the faster that a decision maker can clear out their inboxes, the better the information health of their team / organisation. (You could make a crude analogy for a heart pumping blood around the body) MY APPROACH You cannot be everywhere at once! It is important to tell folks to use certain inboxes and focus mostly on clearing these out. For external people, I direct them to my email and, internally, I mostly use Slack. These are my primary inboxes. I make it clear to the most important folks (my team, investors, customers, etc) to get in touch via these channels. I then dedicate time throughout the week (Monday morning, Wednesday afternoon and Friday afternoon) to clear things out. On top of this, it’s important to try and have a sensible system around instant replies, archiving, forwarding, snoozing, etc. to help manage your clear out sessions. When I open email during the day I'll try to resolve important things instantly, forward emails to the right person / team (even if I have to reply properly later), and snooze things that can wait 24hrs to my next deep session. For my secondary inboxes (LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Twitter, Notion, etc) I try to look at these at least once a week and direct anything/anyone important to my preferred inbox for all future communications. Over time, this compounds and it all becomes more straightforward. Remember, fellow founders, it’s totally allowed to have clear internal policies around communication with you and, if you want it, norms for communication at your entire organisation. At its core, maintaining healthy inbox habits isn’t just about personal productivity. When information moves swiftly and efficiently, so do decisions and outcomes. OVERDOING IT Some people turn Inbox Zero into their full time job. This is stupid and harms them and the org. You cannot let others dictate your life or your work - you need to be in control and give yourself time for deep work. This is why the boundaries I've set up around clearing things out multiple times a week helps - I know that I'll deal with it soon so I can safely ignore it for now. Fellow inbox zero folks, I’d be interested in hearing any other top tips that you may have on staying on top of things!

Email Overload is Real—Here’s What Actually Helps If your inbox feels like a never-ending to-do list, you’re not alone. No matter how much I try to stay on top of emails, they just keep coming. Over the years, I’ve found a few things that actually make a difference—not just another system to maintain, but real, practical changes that help keep the overwhelm in check. Here’s what works for me: 1️⃣ The 2-Minute Rule ⏳ – If I can reply in two minutes or less, I just do it. Otherwise, it gets added to my task list instead of sitting in my inbox. 2️⃣ Folders & Filters📂 I don’t waste time sorting every email, but I do have filters for things like newsletters, CC’d emails, and automated reports. This keeps my main inbox cleaner without me having to do anything. 3️⃣ Inbox Check-Ins Instead of Constant Refreshing – I try to check email at set times instead of reacting to every notification. This one is easier said than done, but when I stick to it, my focus is way better. 4️⃣ Saved Responses for Repetitive Emails ✉️ – If I find myself typing the same thing over and over, I save it as a template. Even if I tweak it each time, it still saves time. 5️⃣ Unsubscribing (Aggressively) ❌ – If I don’t actually read it, it’s gone. No guilt, no second-guessing. Less clutter = less stress. Also, one thing I’ve learned: not every email needs an instant response. Just because it’s in my inbox doesn’t mean it’s my top priority. And that mindset shift alone has helped a lot.