Ask HN: Best way to organize 100-200 emails/day in Outlook?

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Because the organization of email works best if it correlates with the way you have to use them to do your job. That determines what is a courtesy copy and what is critical to your attention and what can be completely ignored.

It determines whether the high bit is client or date or buyer or seller or something else.

Email in your inbox is only for email where you are on the TO: line.

All other emails (BCC'ed or CC'ed) should go into a folder called "Inbox - CC."

That's it.

https://www.hanselman.com/blog/one-email-rule-have-a-separat...

The hardest part will be filtering the (as @sumthinprofound put it) the "do" from the "defer." If you're starting out you probably can't delegate much beyond the admin stuff. Utilize tagging and importance levels. If something is sent only to you, it's probably more important than something sent to 15 people. You can't jump every time an email comes in or you won't be able to do more than a few minutes of real work at a time. So, try to get away with only actively checking email every 30-60 minutes and taking a dedicated block of time to reply to everything that you can. Your particular org structure and culture will determine how exactly this plays out, but when I was running a brick & mortar business I would spend about 30-45 minutes on emails twice a day, at 8am and 7pm (give or take). I was only looking at 50-60 real emails a day though and that time usually included whatever work I needed to do to "complete" that email.

You'll want to get to the point where you can be alerted to truly critical emails, but the other stuff just sort of sits there until you can get to it. It will take some time to figure that out, and only you know what the reaction at your work will be if you miss a critical email for half an hour, to know how strict you can be with your filtering (stricter is better obviously but you will end up with false negatives and stuff sitting in your inbox for an hour that really should have been addressed within five or ten minutes).

For instance:

- If an email takes 2 min to answer, do it.

- If it requires an action from you, but at another time. Move it to a "next action" folder (that you'll work through when you have the time).

- Also "archive" and "references" folders are useful, possibly organized by project.

- "Inbox zero" to reduce stress and keep yourself sane.

I handle 2x your volume and this was the best change I ever made.

1. Create categories: .Urgent, .When Possible, PJ Your Project, PJ ...

2. Create two folders: .Action [Set "View" to "Date (Conversations)], .Archive [Set "View" to "Categories"]

3. Create Quick Steps: "Action - Urgent" (Actions: Clear Categories, Move to .Action, Categorize message: .Urgent, Mark as Read, Shortcut: CTRL+Shift+1), "Action - When possible" (Actions: Clear Categories, Move to .Action, Categorize message: .When possible, Mark as Read, Shortcut: CTRL+Shift+2), "Archive" (Actions: Move to .Archive, Categorize message [Leave the category empty to be prompted for the category], Mark as Read, Shortcut: CTRL+Shift+3)

4. Schedule email sessions in your calendar (max. 2 times/day for a fixed time period): For each email: Delete or use the shortcuts to assign them as "Urgent", "When possible" or "Archive" them. Inbox should be empty afterwards. Do not take a look into the inbox outside of scheduled inbox sessions.

5. Work on the emails: Work on the emails in the ".Urgent" folder first. If you got time, work on the emails in the ".Action" folder next.

To process an email means to read it and determine what action is necessary and, if relevant, file in the task system. The possible outcomes from reading an email are: Do, Defer, Delegate, or Archive.

You should Do something immediately if it’s very urgent or quick to do. Otherwise Defer the action for later by saving a task in your management system (not in you inbox). Delegate and Archive are pretty straightforward. Read up on GTD method for more details.

Unless someone does it first, I will probably make my own mail client with these old Opera mail features.

My tips are to enable the CC-yourself option in Outlook to make sure you catch all of your sent emails, and to otherwise keep your sent emails in your sent mailbox until you record your time.

A lot of attorneys hold off on filing emails entirely until they put their time in (i.e. record down their hours for billing purposes). But typically all you really need is what is in your sent email box, which can then be deleted. And keeping up on filing your other emails helps other attorneys and makes you look good.

- stuff I can immediately delete

- stuff I can respond with one liner on the spot

- stuff I need to do some work on, I leave it separate for later that day or I forward it to myself for later

This is based on urgency and importance, that is easy to assess. Reading an email takes from a few seconds to a minute, 200 emails should not take more than 30 minutes to check. If you leave it to pile up, it is harder to manage (at least for me).

One more thing I do is I ask my team no avoid sending me emails I don't need to act on and I don't need to be informed about. I also tell them to put me in CC if I don't need to act. It reduces the number of emails I receive and it makes it easier to evaluate. On average I have less than 50 emails per day that I really need to read and less than 25 are important.

When you meet with people who email you a lot, sort your inbox by person, and with the list in front of you take a moment to ask them “is there anything you’ve sent me that we need to talk about?”

Set up alerts /notifications for VIPs.

You also want to make sure you understand your firm’s email archiving and retention policy. Some firms have specific controls in place (systems that delete uncategorized emails from your inbox after a certain amount of time).

I worked on M&A deals, but doing the IP/Privacy support and not running the whole deal. My structure while working at a bigger firm, which wasn’t perfect, but worked, was to have a folder for each client and a folder for each big client project/deal. Then just keep moving emails to each project folder as they came in. I didn’t really trust rules to do it for me automatically, but that’s just me.

I also set up Outlook to file reply messages in the folder where the original email was. Then I would generally respond only after I’d move the email.

I feel like I’m rambling now, but in case this is remotely helpful, here are a few other thoughts/pain points: 1. I kept my tasks list separate from my inbox. 2. Hot keys are great, especially for moving to folders and finding emails in a thread. There’s not much you need a mouse for after a while. 3. Moving emails to folders is slow if outlook has to populate the huge list of potential folders each time. If you have lots of clients, it may make sense to split things up alphabetically first (Clients A-G in one folder, etc.). 4. This system was also helpful for syncing emails to the correct folder in the firm document management system, which is a whole separate conversation.

Feel free to disregard, but I figured I’d pass along my system, as it seems to be pretty different from what I’m reading here. Firms are interesting animals, especially where record keeping is involved.

My system is simple: a general archive folder, matter-specific folders, and then a to-do list for longer-running things. I aim for inbox zero: every message in the inbox is either one I haven’t reviewed yet or one that I can act on quickly. Every email gets read, acted on or added to the to-do list if necessary, and then filed.

Outlook’s search feature works tolerably well. I search for emails from senders, to recipients, or within certain folders many times a day.

Does it need a reply? Can you reply right now? Reply to it and move it out of your inbox.

Is it something you need to act on later? Make an action in your to-do system. That can be as simple as (in my case) dragging it to Apple Reminders to create a new action with a handy clickable link back to the original email, and setting a meaningful, actionable title like “Review Joe’s proposal”. Now it’s in my actual to-do system, and not a ghost of a vaguely formed request sitting in my inbox and taunting me.

If it’s useful information, archive it, either in the appropriate mail folder or your / your company’s DMS. For my personal use, I adore DEVONthink.

If it’s not something you need to reply to, or act on later, or store for future reference, delete it. I get literally dozens of requests for my time every day, from spammers or trade groups or people who want to sell my company something. I don’t owe those emails my attention.

An email inbox is a terrible task manager. Don’t let it become that for you. When an email comes in, process it one time and then get it out of your sight.

1. make sure you don't check all the time, set specific hours.

2. Skim, respond right away if possible.

3. If I didn't have time to respond or it was low priority i'd mark as unread.

4. If it was high priority and I didn't have time to respond right then I would carve out time in my calendar to respond.

5. Review your queue of unread regularly but not as often as recent emails.

Generally I could tell how behind I was when traveling by the unread mail counter in outlook. If I prioritized well this seemed to work for me. Folders and filters never seemed to be able to ensure I wasn't missing things.

I’m sure you could do this with folders or tags in gmail, I found it useful to be able to see everything unread at a glance.

Never got to inbox zero consistently but archiving the “done” emails to stay as close as possible helps.

More important I think is having some system for managing your todos, which you need to be able to create in one click from an email. I ended up with an outlook task list, I think it’s useful to be able to trigger an email to be “due in 2 days” if you need to say check in on a thread.

With sorting, you must assume how you will want to access the information in the future and put the item in a bucket. That assumption can be wrong, or you can know that something fits in multiple buckets. A particular medical bill could go in buckets "Bills to Pay", "Provider X", or "Tax-related Bills".

Tagging (multi-attribute) is superior to sorting (single attribute, equivalent to a single folder/bucket). You could assign all the above tags to the example medical bill. Tagging really helps when the search engine cannot extract enough information to query on. Especially for short texts or non-textual items, adding contextual tags may be necessary for searchability.

I used to have 4 categories in outlook called SNA meeting, SNA Errand, SNA waiting.. SNA means strategic next action. It was great because you didn’t have to think about what you’re waiting to do on something.

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I don’t try for inbox zero and I don’t sort things into matter folders. I tried that when I first started out, but things were either out of sight, out of mind or I’d get behind and eventually lose emails to the firm retention policy.

Here’s my system now. Junk/newsletters get deleted ASAP. Things on my to do list get marked as Unread. Emails I don’t need to reference again are marked Read. Everything stays in my inbox until the end of the month. In my inbox folder, I have subfolders for each year and sub-subfolders for each month. At the end of the month, everything I received or sent gets dropped into the folder for that month. Then I make liberal use of the search and sort functions if I need to find things again. This works for me because I’m more likely to remember WHEN I worked on a particular matter than anything else.

If you do want to use matter/deal folders, I recommend you set up your rules to send copies to the folder, not clear your inbox entirely. I have a junior associate right now who regularly misses important emails because she has everything sorted into matter folders and forgets to check them. Or she forgets that she has to manually refresh her folders when checking email on her phone.

Also, as an associate, you usually can’t do the whole “only look at an email once” thing. You’ll often need to do some research or complete some work before you can reply. But! If you’ve been asked to handle something by email, I beg of you, please reply “will do” when you see the email (even if you’re not going to “do” right away) and then immediately put that item on your to do list so you don’t forget. I keep trying to pound this into my junior’s heads. Your senior associates/partners need to know that you’ve seen the email, even if you can’t give a substantive response right away. You’re a star associate if your response is “Will do. Can I get this to you by [time]?”

Similarly, you may be CC/BCC on an email that actually has tasks for you or is something you need to keep track of. For example, you may be the person collecting final signature pages for the team but only be CC on the emails circulating them. Or a partner may reply to an email you were CC on, leave you in CC, but ask you specifically to handle something. Do not assume an email not directed TO you has nothing important for you.

Also, the volume of emails during a deal is insane. During a closing once, I got 600 emails in an 8-hour period. If you’re not careful, you’ll spend your whole day checking email and not actually get any work done. Deals have more urgency than most litigation, so you probably can’t do what I do: turn off all your email notifications and only look at your inbox every couple of hours. Find a system that keeps you in the loop but doesn’t prevent you from working.