
The same goes for answering emails late at night: Scott says this sends a message to your boss or coworkers that you don't mind working late at night. Scott's reasoning is that morning email replies show people that you're available at that time, and encourage them to send you emails and expect replies on future mornings. There are various reasons why this could be a bad idea: it starts your day with other people's priorities, it can take up more time than you expect, or it can distract you from doing "real" work. Don't Check Email in the Morning (or at Night)Īnother tip from Scott is a common one: don't check your email in the morning. Likewise, if you set aside time for internal work emails, you can focus on just those. This is a really good way to manage the time and energy you put into processing emails, because you can prioritize external emails if you want to (as Scott does) without wasting time looking for them in your inbox-or getting distracted by internal emails instead. Scott uses filters to send incoming emails into three different inboxes: one for external emails (anyone outside his company), another for any emails he's CC'd on, and a last one for all internal company emails sent directly to Scott. This tip comes from Scott Hanselman, a program manager at Microsoft, author and avid blogger and speaker. When those emails are finally dealt with, the label gets removed automatically. Everything else is archived or actioned immediately. For any email Robby needs to action in the future, he adds a star, so they're easy to find in his "Starred" folder.
Proper way to respond to unreplied email archive#
This means he has only one chance to act on each email: the first time he reads it (unless he wants to hunting through his archive for it later). His Gmail setup automatically archives all read emails. Robby Macdonell shared a way to force yourself into this habit on the RescueTime blog. Instead of reading new emails and leaving them to be dealt with later, getting into the habit of "processing" new emails will save you the time and effort of handling each one multiple times. If you're prone to rereading emails over and over, this could be the trick you need to get your inbox back under control. Hopefully you'll find a nugget or two in here that will work for you.

Some of these strategies focus on managing your inbox, while others look at better ways to send emails. I've done a bit of hunting around to see how successful people handle an influx of emails. I'm resigned to the fact that email is an unavoidable part of running a startup, but I'm determined to cut down on any unnecessary emails so I can keep some semblance of order in my inbox.

Responding to customer feedback and support requests, discussing our plans and progress, getting advice from other startup founders, setting up meetings: all of this happens via email. Something I've noticed from building Exist is that a surprising amount of work in a startup is just sending emails.
