Organizing the E-mail Clutter

Starting a new life?  You've probably been procrastinating all your life.  If you decided to get into the program, read up.  The thing I hate to see the most is a cluttered desk.  Call me OC (if you will), but everything works smoothly when things are organized.  From folders to iTunes library, I have everything arranged for finding stuff easily to maintain a neat and livable desktop.  You may argue about the availability of universal search tools (like Spotlight for the Mac), but nothing beats a clean and tidy workspace.


Let's start with your e-mail, an area where it easily gets chaotic when not maintained properly.  Before we begin, let us put a disclaimer where this article is only a conceptual tip and not a how-to tutorial.

Rule#1 - Inbox Zero (nothing follows)
There's only one rule to remember in organizing e-mail.  Honestly I forgot where I've read about this, but there are only two things you can do with e-mail -- take action or delete.  Taking action to e-mail can be of several things: response, defer or file.  You can assign mail folders for e-mails that you cannot take action right away and for e-mails you need to keep as reference.  Though deleting is the easiest part, you need to make sure every e-mail is of non-importance (like junk mails).  You can review e-mails manually or setup the rules setting of your e-mail program.

Adding rules filter out e-mails to better organize.

Smart Mailboxes
Getting you to zero inbox also has its limitation, it takes a bit of searching and effort to remember where a group of e-mails were stored.

iTunes offered a neat feature (Smart Playlist) that eventually found its way to Apple Mail -- it's called Smart Mailboxes.  If you're already familiar on how to setup such, it is the best way of finding stuff without doing lots of searching.  Say you received several hundred mails on your Inbox and you only wanted to filter out the ones that were sent today by your boss (just for fun, they are e-mails labelled "Project XYZ" with the highest priority setting).

Simple configuration of a Smart Mailbox to organize all e-mails received today.

This would get you started and hopefully would last through out the rest of the year.  Have fun!