Organizing Email Saves An Hour A Day

 

People spend an average of one hour every day just looking for things; things in their email inbox, computer or printed files. If you had an organized email file system, chances are you would require far less time searching for things and far more time actually using the information you've found.

 

Your incoming email can be classified as either a "reference" email or an "action" email. Action emails are those that you need to "do" something specific. Reference emails are all the other emails we get each day, containing information or attachments we need to refer back to; and the ones we spend an hour or day looking for!

 

Setting up a strategy for dealing with all of these emails makes it much easier to find them when you need them. First, consider what your most important activities are that your non-profit or business needs to focus on. You're going to create folders within your email program that are aligned with your personal objectives or projects; so that if you receive emails that don't fit into any of your folders- it's likely you won't even need to store it.

 

Consistent Folder System

 

When creating your folder structure, you'll want to use the same hierarchy for all of your storage systems. This means when you set up folders in your email program, you will want to have identical folders set up in your computer (like in the My Documents section) so you can find and file the information easily.

 

Create a "top-level" folder for each of your projects or objectives. Let's say you deal with a few main activities in your non-profit, like "Fundraising Events", "Marketing", and "Annual Donation". These would be the folders you see in your email program as well as in your computer's files, and again in your file cabinet. Within each of your main, top level folders, you would have subfolders. In your "Fundraising Events" folder, for example, you might then have individual folders for each event, or perhaps a monthly folder structure makes more sense for how your organization operates it's fundraising activities.

 

Once you've created your folder system, and have made sure all of your storage systems match the same hierarchy, you'll find it easy to file and retrieve information from all of your various storage resources.

 

Where To Save It

 

When an email comes in containing an attachment, where should you save it? In your email folder, or in your computer's folder? A good rule of thumb is to save the attachment as a document in your computer's files under the appropriate folder whenever the message in the email isn't all that important. Many times attachments are sent with an email message that says "File attached" or something similar, and you don't need to save that for anything! It's always a good idea to save the documents in your computer's files because the search function will look within each document to find things- so if you just can't find a document you need, you can search for information based on what's in the document and have success finding it that way- quickly and easily. However, if your email with the attachment also contains useful information, save the entire thing in your email program's folders.

 

Since we're not quite "all digital" yet, and some information is in physical, paper form, we still have a need for file cabinets and storage space that's not in the computer. If you need to keep it in this manner, you would file that information under the appropriate folder in a file cabinet.

 

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