Dear Sally,

Thanks for posting, Sally! I’m sorry to hear about your woes, Drowning in Denver - we’ve all been there!

I’ve recently been into the “snooze” functionality for my emails (I use Gmail) to alert when I’m ready to respond, if I can’t answer it quickly. I typically snooze until later the in afternoon when I have time blocked off in my calendar to review and have finished with my meetings.

I also do this with non-customer emails so that I have the space to read company or industry updates on the slower days and don’t have to worry about interruptions. 

Hope this helps!

Dear Sally,

I have a couple of hacks for Outlook that help me.

• Quick Steps:  This is a huge help in quickly sorting my messages.  I have a few that I really like, Mark as Read and Delete, Mark as Read and move to a frequently used folder.
• Flag messages that require follow up action with a date.  Add the “For Follow Up” to your Favorites list.
• Use find related messages and read messages in order.

Those are a few things that help me.  Hope one or more of these help you.

I’ve been using the method Sally mentioned to manage my emails for years, and it’s a game changer!  Even after coming back from a long vacation or even Maternity leave, I can quickly triage my emails (no matter how many), mark with their appropriate flag, and then get to work.  I use 3 different flags in Gmail:

• Red exclamation point = needs a reply or is a to do
• Purple question mark = I am waiting for a response
• Blue lowercase i = reference / emails to read later

Using this method, I am able to maintain a clean and organized inbox (screenshot below).  And if I need to reference an older email, everything else is archived and easily found with a search.  

Hope this helps!