As a carpet cleaner likely your inbox is the center of your universe. (And even more so if your focus is on restoration!)
Fielding emails from employees, adjusters, sub contractors, clients and prospective customers may drown you in “too much information”! (Not to mention your weekly e-mailed QuickTIPs from SFS!) So here are six ways from our strategic partner, Chris Gripp at Sign Warehouse, to get your Inbox under control …
1. Clean your inbox out – completely. When was the last time you had ZERO e-mails in your inbox? Probably never! Remember, getting your inbox down to zero at least daily is an insanely liberating feeling! Of course, new e-mails will be arriving and that is great. But knowing that you are free, free, free even for a second is a great way to boost your productivity and confidence!
2. Be frugal with your folders and filters- Folders (or “labels” as Gmail calls them) can be a great way to organize old e-mails. However, casually accumulating folders make it more difficult to find what you are looking for. (One expert calls this willy-nilly approach “digital bloat”.) Keep folders for important documents you will refer to regularly or projects that you are currently working on. Archive other items. (If you use Gmail archived e-mails are just a quick search away.)
Filters can also be helpful and harmful. Filters do help by capturing specific emails as they come in and diverting them to their respective folders before they ever even hit your inbox. However, if you have too many filters going to too many folders you will lose track and be worse off than before! Sigh …
3. Delete, delete, delete- When opening up your inbox for the first time daily take a few minutes to delete unimportant messages that you don’t need to open. Get rid of the clutter first and then read through the important stuff. You’ll feel more encouraged after seeing the number of emails in your inbox shrink. (Of course, you should ALWAYS open your weekly QuickTIPS!)
4. Take care of it NOW- Open your e-mails as they come in. A good rule of thumb is to take action on any e-mail if it can be handled in less than 2 minutes. (Which should be the majority of your messages.) If you can’t take care of it right away transfer the task to your calendar or task list.
5. Use “canned responses”- When possible have a canned response that will handle simple requests, such as directions to your office or information about popular services. While these stock replies won’t handle all your emails they will take some of the load off and let you keep clipping along.
6. Look at Gmail’s priority inbox- A new feature of gmail- Priority Inbox watches what you open to “learn” the important messages and senders in your life… and then it elevates those to the top. It’s time-consuming to figure out what needs to be read and what needs a reply. Priority Inbox really helps. You automatically spend less time on the unimportant, and eventually start wondering why you even needed to receive those emails to begin with!
A full email inbox can be overwhelming. By implementing these tips you can control your inbox so it doesn’t control you!
NOTE: Of course, organizing your business (and your life) is about more than just getting your inbox under control. Chris promises in his next post to share his business organizing principles.