My E-mail Folders

As a follow-up to my “empty your inbox” folder, I thought I’d respond to a question in the comments with another post.

I struggle with how to file things for my work email because there are so many moving pieces that require attention. I’d be interested to hear what you have as your folder structure for filing things.

Everything useful I know about e-mail management I learned from Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero. Learn this. Over time this has evolved for me.

His basic folder structure initially translated for me as:

1. TRASH (the most important folder. put stuff here with impunity and empty regularly.)
2. Needs Response (To do)
3. Hold (waiting for something, or need to keep around short term)
4. Waiting For (a delegated to do that is waiting for someone else)
5. Archive

Over time, I added a few folders to get something basically like this:

1. TRASH
2. Needs Response
3. Hold
4. Waiting For
5. Archive
6. Newsletters (subscriptions)
7. Flyers (subscriptions that are trying to sell me something that for some reason, I haven’t unsubscribed from…)
8. Social notifications (twitter, facebook, and everything else that notifies me of activity on my sites go here)
9. Blog comments
10. Lists
11. Receipts (from itunes and monthly subscriptions)
12. Reports (from different auto-notifiers, usually server related)
13. (and on) Various project related folders that stick around short term.

This is probably a little bloated, but it works very well for me.

Posted

5/26/2009

Productivity, Business & Management

Matt Heerema

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8 responses to “My E-mail Folders”

Ryan

5/27/2009

With Gmail I rarely need that many folders. When "search" works it takes the place of my ultra-organization needs. I pretty much lump everything into a "needs action" folder and just use Gmails "starred" feature to do it. So I have Trash, Archive, Starred (To-Do/Needs Action).

The only think that I have a grey area on right now is the "awaiting reply" bucket. Currently I just archive it and assume that if it is important enough for them, then they will actually reply. If it's important enough for me then it's probably in a seperate program I use for my important to-do's.

I'm curious, do you use another to-do program such as Things or an iPhone ap? I currently am trying to get away from email telling me what I have "to-do".

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mheerema

5/27/2009

Ryan –

I use Gmail as well. My many many folders serve two purposes:

1) Top level \”buckets\” almost like sub-inboxes that I know I can ignore, to filter known, regular, incoming emails, and still have it visible the quantity of each type that is there (for instance, I am interested if there are 4 new blog comments awaiting my reading, etc.)

2) \”One click searches\”. Different subjects (usually project based) that I find myself needing to to reference constantly get their own label and filter. At times I can also make this category of email (usually filtered by subject line or sender, or some combination thereof) skip my inbox, thus further clearing up the inbox noise.

I do use Things, but have recently become enamored with Hit List. Pretty sure I'll be transitioning over to that completely. Honestly, I don't have a work flow down for capturing to dos on the iPhone. This is something I'm still looking for a great solution on. Even with the Things app for the iPhone, I rarely used it.

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mheerema

5/27/2009

Ryan –

I use Gmail as well. My many many folders serve two purposes:

1) Top level "buckets" almost like sub-inboxes that I know I can ignore, to filter known, regular, incoming emails, and still have it visible the quantity of each type that is there (for instance, I am interested if there are 4 new blog comments awaiting my reading, etc.)

2) "One click searches". Different subjects (usually project based) that I find myself needing to to reference constantly get their own label and filter. At times I can also make this category of email (usually filtered by subject line or sender, or some combination thereof) skip my inbox, thus further clearing up the inbox noise.

I do use Things, but have recently become enamored with Hit List. Pretty sure I'll be transitioning over to that completely. Honestly, I don't have a work flow down for capturing to dos on the iPhone. This is something I'm still looking for a great solution on. Even with the Things app for the iPhone, I rarely used it.

Reply
Eric Ritchey

5/27/2009

I hear The Hit List is working on an iPhone app?

At work we use Atlassian's Jira to manage our workflow. I've looked at a number of iPhone apps that access Jira, but they're either too expensive, or not feature-rich enough for me. Apple needs a x-day trial of some kind for apps…

I have found an app that allows me to access Jira on my desktop without having to log in via the website. It also doubles as a time-tracker with start/stop capabilities — something that Jira lacks and is extremely useful for a consultant. i'm not in that environment anymore, but have found that I stay on task when a timer is running.

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eric Ritchey

5/27/2009

sorry – forgot to include the link: http://worklogassistant.com

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James Carleton

5/27/2009

I need a better connection between gmail and a master to-do list. "Things" is a great program but I'm not in the habit of checking it separately.

Matt, thanks for sharing your process with us over the last few posts.

Reply
Ryan

5/28/2009

Hit List looks cool but without an iPhone app it's useless for me since it's become my brains :) I use Appigo's To-Do for the iPhone. It is really nice but it is iPhone only. Uses GTD philosophy but is flexible enough to use it how you want. On my way to check out Jira now.

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mheerema

5/28/2009

Ryan, you'll probably want Things then, or hold out until Hit List comes out with an iPhone app.

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My E-mail Folders

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8 responses to “My E-mail Folders”

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