WASTING Too Much TIME With EMAILS? Do THIS

this is how you and your inbox will look and feel like by the end of the video the inbox empty clean and well organized and yourself on top of your to-do's self-determined and satisfied I've been on the hunt for the best practices for email inbox management for the last 10 years in which I've been using Gmail Outlook and Apple Mail I've been talking to friends colleagues watching tutorials and tried almost everything by myself and after all that time searching and trying out I can tell there are only three simple methods that you should apply to master your inbox and it starts with method number one automating as much as possible in Outlook there are two ways to automate and we will start with the first real automation which can be achieved by implementing rules rules are always on and run automatically in the background for whichever use case you have set them up for example when a message is received from a certain person or with a certain title this message will automatically be moved into a folder that you have defined beforehand a very popular application might be for email newsletters that you get and that are all from the same sender you might not want to read through those newsletters right away but maybe at a later Point therefore you can set up a rule that marks them as red and moves them into a dedicated folder so you have them at hand whenever you have free time to read them to set up a rule you need to click on the file Tab and on manage rules and alerts first you can choose for which inbox the rule should apply if you have several email addresses connected to Outlook click on new rule and you'll get to the rules with it which will guide you through the process you can choose from different templates to stay organized or up to date as an alternative you can start from a blank rule let's say we want to set up a rule that marks all messages coming from a specific sender as read and move them into a certain folder since this is not a standard rule we want to start from a blank one and apply this to all messages that are currently in my inbox and to all emails that I will receive in the future thereafter we can select the conditions based on which our rule is applied in our example we want to scan all incoming messages for those from YouTube for example as a sender mark them as red and move them into the folder called YouTube folder therefore we select from people or public group as a condition and specify the no reply YouTube email address as the sender alternatively you could also choose someone from your address book next we can specify what we would like to do with that message as said we would like to mark it as red and move to a specific follow order that we need to Define by clicking on that hyperlink let's choose the folder YouTube and click OK such that the rule is now updated with the actions next you can specify any exceptions which is not relevant in our case though we can just click next let's stick with the suggested name for our rule we can run it for messages in our inbox as well as turn on the rule on from now on for all incoming messages by clicking finish the rule will be applied just as you said it the second way to automate your inbox is via Outlook quick steps they are compared to rules not automatically applied to messages but help you to perform several individual steps and actions just by one click so the automate common or repetitive tasks and thereby save you several minutes of work per email for example I often flag certain emails and set a reminder in a week time especially when this is something thing where I'm awaiting feedback from colleagues instead of always flagging them manually by going through a bunch of manual clicks and steps I can just set up a new Quick Step once and apply this in one click going forward before setting up this new customized Quick Step let's look at the standard ones here in the Home tab under quick steps you will find quick steps for moving an email to a specific folder and marking it as unread forwarding to a certain person or manager or replying to an email and deleting the original one you can manage your existing quick steps or create a new one by choosing a standard template or customizing your own which is what we are doing click on custom Quick Step and choose a name such as read move and follow-up underneath you can simply choose from an action that you would like to apply to all messages to which you apply this rule in our case we want to Mark the message as well that thereafter we add an action that creates a task with the text of the message and finally we want to move that message to our YouTube folder as well finally you can choose a shortcut for this rule if you would like to and write a tool tip message having finished the setup your Quick Step will appear on top in the ribbon under quick steps and can easily be applied to any email in your inbox now if you're thinking that having automated your inbox is already enough to stay on top of it you do not yet know the second method color coding your emails indeed you can set a conditional format for your incoming emails depending on certain criteria such as the sender certain words or time doing so helps you to quickly identify for example the emails where you are the only person directly addressed and come from your manager or more important clients that's exactly what I did as well all the emails I am the only person an address to or all emails that come from my manager are colored red whereas all others are not colored that's how I identify the more important emails much quicker and can prioritize them and action quickly to introduce conditional formatting in Outlook go to the view Tab and click on view settings if you click on conditional formatting another pop-up will appear that lets you define the format the rules that are already listed here are the default ones from Outlook for example for messages being bold if they are unread let's say we want to add another rule for all emails addressed only to you click on ADD give the ruler name and choose the font I usually change the font to red or green and leave the rest as is so click OK and change the condition below which lets the actual magic happen for our example we want all emails addressed to you as the only recipient being marked in red irrespective of the type time of the email in the second tab there are more choices that you can apply such as looking for a certain attachments or email sites further in the advanced tab you can be very specific and Define many different criteria that shall apply to your conditional formatting however none of those Advanced options matter to us in this example but feel free to play around and see if any of those help you to create useful conditional formats in Outlook click OK until you get back to your inbox and you'll see that the conditional format is applied in my case now all emails are highlighted in red because all of them were addressed directly to me but especially in a standard inbox at work this might look totally different now we have the first two methods to own your inbox again automating and color coding but the third method will help you to fully Master it following up via tasks even if it does not sound too exciting you should not underestimate the power of Outlook tasks and the peace of mind they can provide you imagine you have gotten a project update email just for your information indicating that a project Milestone will be reached next week you have either moved it to one of your folders manually by a quick step or it has already been moved by one of your rules but how do you know if the Milestone was actually achieved in a week time keeping track of actions and to-do's I find tasks super helpful because you can just set a date and time at which you will be prompted to follow up on an email such that it won't fall off your desk to flag an email right click on the email or on the small red flag that appears when you hover above the date of the email select follow-up and either choose a predefined date such as tomorrow or next week or choose a custom date alternatively you could select to add a reminder in any case this pop-up will appear that will give you the ability to define the start and end date of your flag and the exact date and time of your reminder once you have set your flagging reminder it will show in the message list the reading Pane and the taskbar on the right if you still have the feeling that you get way too many emails after having implemented all three methods you should probably also rethink your email sending habits so stop using emails as a chat and do not send random one-liners all day long but rather use teams or slack for quick exchanges with colleagues because remember for every email that you send you will most likely get one back that fills your inbox if you want to know even more Outlook tips for much more productivity check out this video

Channel: Lea David

Views: 136,306

Keywords: email tips, inbox zero, gmail tips, email productivity, microsoft 365, time management, how to organize your inbox, outlook tips, outlook tips and tricks, outlook tips and tricks for work, outlook tips and tricks for productivity, outlook tips & tricks to take control of your inbox, inbox management tutorial, outlook email, outlook email tips and tricks, email tips and tricks, email tips for professionals, email tips for students, email tips and tricks outlook

Id: JsOn5zmtMwE

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 29 2022