It is estimated that employees send around 37 emails per day but receive around 78 in their inbox. This can be overwhelming, particularly if you have different mailboxes to check. After you have synced your email accounts to Outlook, you can start to use its tools to improve your productivity and response to emails. Follow these top tips to manage your mailbox more efficiently.
Color Coding
This simple hack makes use of flags and categories to allow you to see what your priority emails and tasks are. You can create color coded categories by right clicking on any email and choosing ‘Categorize’. Select ‘All Categories’, and double click on the name of the color to rename it. For example, useful labels might include ‘Urgent Action’, ‘To Do’ or ‘To Read’. You can then manually put a category on each email to show whether it is for action or non-urgent. Color coding categories has been shown to enhance productivity around the important tasks.
Drag And Drop
Many managers often struggle to sift through several emails to find the contact details of important people they speak with regularly. The easiest method to keep these details is to drag and drop the email to the ‘Contacts’ symbol on the bottom left hand pane of Outlook. A pop-up will appear showing that their email details have been entered, and a copy of the email is on the right-hand side, where you may find their phone number and address, which can be copied into the relevant fields. You can also drag and drop your emails to the ‘Task’ symbol in the same area, and then set reminders to complete actions.
Priority Email Deletion
Accumulating emails can lead to problems in Outlook. For example, you may wish to send one with a large attachment, but the email stays in the outbox without sending. To resolve Outlook outbox not sending emails, you can organize your emails by size using the top bar above your emails. You can delete larger emails to save space, and emails in the outbox should now send. Although some psychologists suggest that having too many unread emails doesn’t necessarily mean unorganized, it may be worthwhile to remove some to stop issues. To delete your emails in the inbox regularly, you can click on the ‘Sweep’ function, which appears at the top of your screen when clicking on an email.
These top tips should make you more efficient when checking you mail, and should take away some of the stress of a full inbox. Emails sent to you are priorities for others, so be sure to remember what your priorities are for the day.
