Many of us have a love/hate relationship with our email inbox. The form of communication that makes work life so much easier can also become a beast of a burden if not managed regularly and properly. We reached out to five local professionals, who share personal insight for managing their email inboxes.
“If I have a day full of meetings, I simply set the Out Of Office message. This way, I set the expectation with my clients that I won’t be able to get back to them right away. Then, when I am ready and have time, I respond promptly. Also, with TechArk, we are big on communication, and we have a global team. We have minimized the use of emails within the company, and we highly leverage our project management tool for all communication. This way, everyone is kept in the loop on projects and there are very few emails to manage.” —Pratik Kothari, CEO, TechArk
“Aside from the standard filing, categorizing, labeling, deleting and monthly unsubscribing, I use what I call the “draft emails” system. For emails that require more thought, additional attachments, etc., I start the email and then at the end of every day, I comb through my email drafts, complete the correspondence and send.” —Kelli Webb, Principal and Founder, The KBD Group, LLC
“When emails come in, I immediately take care of them one way or another—by deleting, by forwarding to the correct person or by responding. I cannot have any numbers on my phone that show I have any amount of messages at any point of time. They always have to be empty.” —Katie Collett, News Anchor, WAVY/FOX 43
“I like to organize my emails by level of importance so that when I have the opportunity to reply, I can respond to my most important and time sensitive emails first.” —Ryan Downey, Director of Media & Community Relations, Hampton CVB
“When you go on vacation, your email inbox can get filled up in a hurry, and the last thing you want to do is spend your vacation checking email. So, when I get back to work, the first thing I do is sort my email by subject. This allows me to go to the most recent email about a particular topic and potentially enables me to delete several other emails without having to even open them up.” —Mike LaRock, VP of Finance/CFO, Sysco Hampton Roads
