Email Inbox Organization

I have given up trying to sort it with all the NDA volume. Spend more time filing emails in folders than it’s worth

Folders for active, inactive, dead, marketing, projects, internal bullshit. Subfolders for each distinct item. Move things to the appropriate folder as completed, delegated, or added to my personal workstream tracker.

Similar to an above poster: too many sub folders is counterintuitive. I have a folder for each deal and I create a rule that automatically places the email into the folder so I don’t have to manually drag and drop.

Inbox zero, or at least if it's in my inbox, it's a to-do.

I got a second 34" flat monitor turned vertical beside my main 34" curved ultrawide screen and above my 13" laptop screen. Laptop is for WebEx/pdf's, main screen is for models, and vertical screen is dedicated Outlook screen. Helped me manage emails 1000x better than before.

file, do, or delete, that's it. the only emails that sit in my inbox are the once weekly email I send myself with my weekly plan (thanks cal newport) or emails that have yet to be filed.

almost everything gets filed, I have a folder for clients in general and then a folder for every individual on my team and their emails get auto sorted

if client email is simple, I'll reply right away. if complicated, I'll ask for a call (I hate back and forth email and it's terribly inefficient) or more often than not, call/text them to discuss. I aim to have every client responded to by 5p (if it comes in after 5p, too bad, they can wait)

if a team email/question is urgent, they call me or ask about it during our morning meeting. if something comes up intraday that can't wait, they use our chat app. I aim to reply to emails from teammates by EOD but we also have a culture where email is more of unidirectional communication (FYIs) rather than an ongoing conversation

I also have all alerts for incoming emails turned off. if it's urgent, everybody that needs it has my phone number. this has greatly helped because I will check my inbox maybe 2-3x a day and because I have that weekly email (with my to dos for the week), it helps my focus. 

Zero folders. Inbox houses all. Unread emails are yet to be addressed. Read emails are addressed.

Abject chaos but it works for me. 

If it's stupid I delete it. 

If it does not require a response I leave it read. 

If it does require a response, I mark it as unread so the notifications will annoy me. 

You can spend hours organizing your emails into chains and folders and whatever. Or you can just use the search function if you need to find something and spend your time doing more productive things than email organization.