It’s office organising month and today we’re talking about email

I received this question from a reader and I’ve been waiting for March to answer it. I just randomly decided that March will be office organising month on the blog because I have a few things in mind I want to share about offices.

I have trouble deciding if an email needs to be stored (will I need it in the future?). If yes, where and once I have filed it, I don’t have any system to go through them again so outlook becomes problematic.

If you have written any posts that would help could you guide me to them?

For example how long would you keep email receipts from online purchases? I also tend to store useful newsletters but then never get around to reading them again.

Emails are the main area I struggle with.

Thanks,

Joanne

I’m super passionate about emails so I loved that Joanne wrote to me.

My personal email policy is the same as my paper policy – keep very little because otherwise you have to store them.

Storing emails

The only emails I specifically store are my template emails and ones delegating work to my virtual assistant, Trisha. And that’s not so much to check up on her but to remind myself if I have asked her to do something or not.

I do keep a couple of others for short-term reference purposes like coaching action plans I send to my clients, emails from my kids’ school, etc. I keep the old one til I get the new one…

I do ask myself why I need to keep them and usually my rule of thumb is, if that information is nowhere else, then I’ll keep it for a while. E.g. if I send out a form to a client, I don’t keep those emails because I have those forms elsewhere.

The best question to ask – why do I want to keep these? Because I always have is not a good answer. Really question your habits.

How long to keep email purchase receipts?

I have a folder called temporary/ etsy purchases (which, right there, shows you where I spend a lot of money :)) I drag all my receipts in there until the item arrives. So with my Amazon Kindle purchases, I never keep those receipts since the book is transferred to my Kindle immediately. I print the groupon-type emails if I need to physically visit a vendor (hair, massage, etc.) as you need to present the voucher anyway.

Storing newsletters

I never keep these. In my mind, newsletters are current, hence the word “new” 🙂 If I get behind, I just delete them unless I see a subject I’m really interested in reading about. I actually have two from one person in my inbox at the moment because I need to download audios from the specific site.

And, if I download audios, I listen within the week otherwise it’ll never happen (I’ve never thought, “oh I’m so bored, let me scroll through my hard drive and look for things to do. You?) and then I delete the audio from my computer unless I paid for it and will want to listen again.

Radical? Maybe but those things take up space and every coach/ consultant/ online marketer puts out tons of these things. I’ve accepted I will never be able to stay current so I go with what I fancy.

If I find I’ve not wanted to open a newsletter for about 3 – 4 weeks, I spend an extra 30 seconds asking myself why I’m on the list and 90% of the time, I’ll unsubscribe. If my newsletter is a burden to you, please feel free to unsubscribe – I want you to want to read it 🙂

It would be remiss of me not to mention my Office Organising Product Bundle for further email resources. There is a fantastic product in there called Conquer your email, one section of the Virtual Organising Seminar deals with email and one of the sections in the 7 easy steps to organise your office also deals with email. You get audio downloads, stuff to read and you get email support so all the learning styles are well accommodated.

It really is great value for money and if you just put into practice one or two email steps, you’ll save yourself hours over the course of the month. Which will pay for the bundle many times over.

End of sales schpiel 🙂