As knowledge workers, we use email a lot, but it’s amazing how few people know how to deal with it; their inbox becomes completely unmanageable. Having a good organization for your inbox and a method to process it, is crucial to avoid clutter.

I use Gmail for my personal email; I love how it turn emails into conversations and enables you to archive and search very easily. On the other hand, I use Apple Mail at work, so I had to figure out how to use it in the same way.

Keep It Simple

Don’t use a complex structure of folders or you will spend too many time figuring out where to put things; instead use one archive folder.

Mail App Sidebar

When I’m done with an email (having taken the proper action for it), I either delete it or move it to the archive folder. If I need to find an old email, I simply search for it in the archive.

I use two more archive folders for disposable emails to track activities of our build and bug systems. I’ve setup two rules to automatically move incoming emails to these folders.

Smart Mailboxes

In order to quickly find some emails, I use smart mailboxes (realtime rule-based filters) to dig into the archive and the inbox.

Flagged, is a smart mailbox that shows all flagged emails. I generally flag an email when I want to deal with it later or follow-up with an important conversation.

Yesterday and Past Week smart mailboxes are used to quickly browse the archive. Since Apple Mail doesn’t organize emails as conversations, I also include the emails have sent in the filter.

Notes and To Do

The new version of Apple Mail comes with an elegant way to organize Notes and To Do items.

I use notes quite often to write quick draft of documents or meeting reports, and I find it’s a convenient place to store them instead of using raw text files.

Concerning To Do items, I generally put them in a separate system but Apple Mail is good enough; mostly because they can be linked to email as a reference.

Actually, whatever the system is, I strongly recommend to organize your To Do items in an efficient system. Each email you receive is potentially an action for you to do, so you better have a good way to deal with them.

Inbox Zero and Getting Things Done

Because emails are also about what action to take, I use two methods to process and manage all the informations I receive during the day: Inbox Zero and Getting Things Done.

Inbox Zero are best practices from Merlin Mann to help you process your inbox efficiently. Basically, when you receive an email, you have 5 actions you can take: archive (or delete), delegate, respond, defer or do. Leaving your inbox with zero mails at the end of the day.

Getting Things Done is a popular method from David Allen to manage and organize your tasks and projects. A definitely worth reading.

Take Back Control

There is no reason you can take back control of your inbox. With the proper organization you will feel more comfortable and less stressed by the amount of things to do.

It definitely worth to spend a little time learning more about how to do it.