5 Emails Folders

This is an interesting new approach to deal with your inbox. Zach Hanlon organizes everything that lands in his inbox in 5 folders:

Inbox: the inbox is a holding pen. Emails shouldn’t stay here any longer than it takes for you to file them into another folder. The exception to this rule is when you respond immediately and are waiting for an immediate response.

Today: Everything that requires a response today.

This Week: Everything that requires a response before the end of the week.

This Month/Quarter: – Everything that needs a longer-term response. Depending on your role, you many need a monthly folder. Others can operate on a quarterly basis.

FYI: Most items I receive are informational. If I think I may need to reference an email again, I’ll save it to this folder.

So, instead of organizing your emails by Subject Line, this system organizes by due date. I am tempted to give this a try. He also says that if your work is project-based you can create this five-folder system for each project. Totally makes sense.

Read his full post over on FastCompany learn more.

4 Comments leave a comment below

  1. Hi Tina – I saw the article earlier today and gave it a quick try…I’m sure the system was worthwhile prior to the ability to ‘snooze’ emails but after playing around with it for a bit I kept thinking why use the folder system that I need to remember to check when I can simply ‘boomerang’/snooze emails that disappear from my inbox and reappear when I tell it to…

    Either way, interested in your take on it :-)

  2. Michael, interesting approach to simply Boomerang the emails instead. Thanks for sharing!

  3. My question is what to do with threads that you’ve actioned/responeded to, but know that there will be more replies and follow-ups to deal with from others on the thread. Where do you put that?

  4. Kelly, once you’ve responded you can simply archive the thread and when someone responds the thread will reappear in your inbox for you to take action (reply/forward/delete/archive/other).