Digital Chaos Control

Tag: inbox

Do You Swipe?
If you have a smartphone, you probably do. Apple’s iOS first popularized the use of swipe gestures such as swiping between app screens. In later iOS updates, Apple added more swipe gestures, such as swiping down to see notifications. Now, smartphone applications are adding their own swipe gestures, which are similar to clicking on something in a computer application and then selecting an action. But swiping is so much simpler, isn’t it?

When you think about all of the actions that you can take with an email – reply to it, forward it, delete it, archive it, move it, flag it, etc., have you ever wondered if there’s a more efficient way?

Swipe Gestures for Apple Mail

Apple, Microsoft, and lots of other application developers have been thinking about it too. Here’s what you can do now with Apple mail on your iOS 9 device:
- You can swipe on an email from left to right and mark the email as “Unread”.
- As you swipe slowly from right to left, you can select “Archive”, “Flag”, or “More…”. From “More..”, you can select “Reply All”, “Forward”, “Mark..”, “Notify Me…”, “Move Message”.
- Swiping quickly from right to left will delete the message.
If you don’t like these gestures, you can go to your Mail settings and change them.

On your Macintosh, you can swipe left on an email to delete it, or swipe right to mark it as read.

Other Applications are Going Further

Some application developers are going further. Here are a couple of examples:
- Outlook for iOS adds the ability to swipe to schedule an email. This is like a “snooze” feature for an email that you don’t have time to deal with right now.
- In Google’s Inbox app, swiping right marks the email as “Done.” Swiping left will “snooze” it, similar to Outlook’s “swipe to schedule”. Swiping down or up will close the email.
One of the biggest breakthroughs in technology was the mouse and the ability to move a cursor around the screen, click to select, and click to perform an action. In the mobile-centric 21^st century, we are moving rapidly toward an all-touchscreen world. Knowing the swipe gestures and other kinds of gestures for your favorite applications will keep you working efficiently.

Confused about how to swipe? Contact me.
April 14, 2016
How to De-Clutter Your Email Inbox
If you’re like most people, you’re getting too many emails in your inbox.

An overflowing inbox can create stress and cause you worry that you’re missing important emails.

One way to reduce the number of emails going into your inbox is to unsubscribe to as many automatic emails as possible, such as the ones from shopping sites that add you to their newsletter or promotions list. However, there still may be automatic emails that you would like to receive and read when you have time. Those emails can be filtered so that they’re being saved automatically to folders that you’ve created but not cluttering up your inbox.

Filters are automatic programs that run within your email reader.

As your email arrives, the filters search for specific criteria, defined by you, and then perform a defined action based on those criteria. For example, your filter can search the “from” field for your grocery store name and then save the email to a folder that you’ve created.

I suggest creating filters for:
- Your social media notifications
- Any mail lists that you’re a member of (school, church, community organization, etc.)
- Any newsletters that you’re subscribed to.
If you use Apple Mail, you create the filters using “Rules” under “Preferences” or using the “Smart Mailbox” feature.

A Smart Mailbox is a filter/mailbox combination (Apple calls folders “mailboxes”). However, a Smart Mailbox doesn’t move the original emails out of the Inbox, so it’s more like a saved search.

Apple Mail also has a useful “VIP” feature that creates Smart Mailboxes for your favorite people. To create a VIP when you open an email from a favorite person, click on the star next to the “from” line in that email.

If you use Outlook, filters are called “Rules.”

In Gmail, open the email that you’d like to filter, click on “More”, and select “Filter Messages Like These” from the drop-down list.

You can also create an email filter from the search box. Click on the down arrow at the right end of the search box, enter your filtering criteria, and then click on “Create filter with this search”.

Need some help with your email management? Contact me.
March 30, 2016
How to Manage Your Gmail Inbox
If you’re dealing with Gmail overload, then you have options to get organized and efficient. (If you haven’t yet read my blog post on email organization, then you may want to read it and come back: 4 Step to Becoming More Responsive). Google calls folders “labels”. Google starts you off with your email organization by automatically creating labels for “Promotions” & “Social” and filtering emails into those labels.

Here are three options for your Gmail organization:
1. Read your Gmail using any mail reader, such as Mac mail or Outlook. You can take advantage of the organization features built into those programs.
2. Manage your inbox through Google’s web interface. From that interface, you can create labels & filters, and also star important emails.
3. Manage your inbox on your mobile device using Google’s Inbox app.
Google based their Inbox interface on the idea that most of us use our email inbox as a to-do list.

Through the app’s interface, you “check off” an email item by swiping right to move it to “done”. You can also “snooze” an email, which allows you to select a time that the email will get moved back to the top of your inbox.

Filters are called “bundles” in the Google Inbox app. You can create new labels with rules. You turn filtering for each label off and on by selecting the label under the menu and disabling or enabling the bundle. If you have an email in a bundle that you want to follow up on, you can pin it so that it shows up as an individual email in your inbox. Then you can snooze it or create a reminder.

Here’s a great post on TechRepublic about creating Google Inbox bundles: Create Your Own Bundles

Your Google reminders are also part of Inbox. You can create new reminders or look at your reminder list and check things off.

Do you need some one-on-one or group help with your email management?
March 17, 2016
How to Become a Pro at Managing Email Overload
The average business worker sends and receives over 120 business emails per day and spends nearly 30 percent of the workweek managing email. Together with personal email, 205 billion emails are sent emails each day—a number expected to increase over 16 percent to 246 billion emails in 2019.

Email overload can result in anxiety and feelings of guilt.

It can be stressful to see your Inbox growing out of control and there is an increased risk of missing important email correspondence. Productivity drops when you have to spend too much time dealing with those emails, and distractions increase with those email notifications.

Fortunately, there are solutions to email overload. To start with, we need to be able to categorize those emails that we receive so that we can move forward with organization and management techniques.

Make Three Lists

I recommend taking a look through your Inbox and making three lists. Keep those lists handy for the next steps.
- Red Category
  - These are emails that you want to see in your Inbox, and that you don’t want to miss.
  - Example: Emails from clients, customers, co-workers, vendors, contractors, etc.
- Yellow Category
  - Identify those emails that you don’t want to miss, but can wait until the end of the day or end of the week.
  - Example: Emails from friends and family, industry associations, school and church mail lists, etc.
- Green Category
  - Identify those emails that you only want to deal with when you have the time.
  - Examples: Newsletters, social media notifications, etc.
Once you have your three lists, you can work on an organization strategy for those emails. You can create folders for those yellow and green category emails and set up email filters so that they will automatically be delivered to those folders instead of cluttering up your inbox.

The folks at SaneBox, an email management app, have written a post here that you might find interesting: Email Triage, and you can read further advice from me here: 4 Step to Becoming More Responsive

Need some one-on-one or group help with your email management?
March 16, 2016
Should you be worried about your ever-increasing email inbox?
It’s very common to procrastinate on dealing with your chaotic email inbox.

Does this sound familiar to you?
- You dread sitting down at your desk to look at email and feel guilty and anxious at the sight of your overflowing email inbox
- You stay at your desk longer every day to try to stay on top of your email inbox.
- The size of your email inbox keeps increasing.
- You have not just emails from your co-workers, clients, friends, and family, but also emails from school lists, notifications from social networks, and newsletters from retailers, vendors, and consultants (including mine! Sign up here: http://www.digitalchaoscontrol.com).
- You have missed important emails.
Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to miss important emails in the clutter.

Email is still an important communication tool but email volume continues to increase every year. It’s no longer possible to treat your email inbox like it’s a to-do list that keeps growing and growing.

How do we turn things around? There are differing opinions and advice on this. One well-known tactic is called “Inbox zero”, which is a technique that encourages you to take the time to look at each and every email and make a decision on it: delete, delegate, respond, defer or do. This is a great technique if you have the time and discipline to go through your email innbox every day, but most of us don’t have enough free time to prioritize email management. You may think that you’ll have some time later when things are less busy, but the truth is that your future self will probably be just as busy.

The first thing to do is to relax.

The size of your email inbox doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you’re not missing important emails or losing track of them, you’re responsive to your clients and co-workers, and that you can find the email that you need when you need it.

Don’t worry about getting to Inbox zero. There are other more productive and efficient ways to deal with email. Read this blog post: 4 Steps to Becoming More Responsive for some tips, and contact me for some one-on-one or group expert help.
March 15, 2016