The Only Five Email Folders Your Inbox Needs
Stop “organizing” your emails by subject and start thinking of them in terms of deadlines.
The biggest mistake you can make on email is creating folders based on topics. Emails, like meetings, rarely stay on track.
The system that saved my sanity requires only five folders:
Inbox Emails shouldn’t stay here any longer than it takes for you to file them into another folder. The exception to this rule is when you respond immediately and are waiting for an immediate response
Today Everything that requires a response today
This Week Everything that requires a response before the end of the week
This Month/Quarter Everything that needs a longer-term response. Depending on your role, you may need a monthly folder. Others can operate on a quarterly basis
FYI Most items I receive are informational. If I think I may need to reference an email again, I’ll save it to this folder
If your work is project-based, you can create this five-folder system for each project. You may have two or three projects running at a time, and technically wind up with 10 to 15 total folders as a result–but the system still holds. After the project is complete, archive the entire structure.