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Home » Computers And Internet Articles » Outlook Tips To Clean Your Inbox

Outlook Tips To Clean Your Inbox!

One of the biggest distractions for most business owners is email. And when you get hundreds (or even thousands) of emails a day, it's really easy for it to quickly overwhelm you. Just as it's hard to concentrate in a messy office, a messy inbox can send you running in a hundred different directions if you are not careful. Here are some power tips to organize your inbox and help you stay focused.

1) Create categories in your inbox.

! Inbox
! Act Now (items I need to do in the next 5 minutes)
! Do (items I should do today)
! Waiting for Reply
! Quick Reference
! Ideas
! News to Read
! Delegate

How to create categories in your inbox

Right click on any email in your inbox
Click categories
Click master category list
Type the name of the new category you wish to create
Hit add
Hit ok
H ok

If you put an exclamation point before the category name, it helps group your important categories at the top of your category box.

Now, whenever an email hits your inbox, you must drop it into a category. This helps you because everything that requires the same type of action is in a "bucket" in your inbox now.

To assign an email to a category, right click on the email, right click categories, find the category you want to assign it to, and put an x in that box

2) Use tasks to group your "to do" items
Items that I will do in the next few days, weeks, or months ahead, you can move to your task folder.

If you customize the current view to group it by high, normal, and low priority it helps you instantly identify which items need your attention first. It follows the Franklin Covey model of thinking of identifying tasks as a A, B, or C.

Here's how to group your tasks by priority.

Right click
Customize current view
Group items by - choose priority
Descending
OK

3) As you read your emails, click and edit the subject line so it says the action you need to take. For example, when a person emails me with a question, I would edit the subject line of that email to say, "Call Jim by Friday at 222-222-2222 about web design quote). That way I don't even have to open the email to have an instant reminder about what action I need to take.

4) Personal Folders help organize your "keeper" emails. Here are personal file folders to consider.

Sunshine File - testimonials and "you are wonderful" notes - this is great pick me up file to look at when you get discouraged

Clients
Company 1 - your consulting company
Company 2 - your online community etc
Products – your book, ebooks, etc can each have a subfolder in here
Speaking
Affiliate - your affiliate logins, notes etc
Reference (this is where you can file all the "how to" tips etc I come across)
Marketing blurbs (article bylines, product descriptions, professional bio, text ads)
Vendors - vendor receipts, passwords
Documentation - any documentation on "how to" that you create for clients or VA's or people you outsource to. That way you never have to rethink it. Send click and send.

That's it, 4 quick tips to conquer the pile of emails in your inbox so you can get more work done!

And here is another random article you might be interested in...

How We Eluded The Bear Of 2000

The date October 13, 2000 will forever be embedded in my mind. It was the day after our mutual fund trend tracking indicator had broken its long-term trend line and I sold 100% of my clients' invested positions (and my own) and moved the proceeds to the safety of money market accounts. Some people thought we were nuts, but I had come to trust the numbers.

The shake out in the stock market, which started in April 2000, had all major indexes coming off their highs, violently followed by just as strong rally attempts. The roller coaster ride was so extreme that even usually slow moving mutual funds behaved as erratically as tech stocks.

By October, the markets had settled into a definable downtrend, at least according to my indicators. We sat safely on the sidelines and watched the unfolding of what is now considered to be one of the worst bear markets in history.

By April 2001 the markets really had taken a dive, but Wall Street analysts, brokers and the financial press continued to harp on the great buying opportunity this presented. Buying on dips, dollar cost averaging and "V" type recovery were continuously hyped to the unsuspecting public.

By the end of the year, and after the tragic events of 911, the markets were even lower and people began to wake up to the fact that the investing rules of the '90s were no longer applicable. Stories of investors having lost in excess of 50% of their portfolio value were the norm.

Why bring this up now? To illustrate the point that I have continuously propounded throughout the 90s; that a methodical, objective approach with clearly defined Buy and Sell signals is a "must" for any investor.

To say it more bluntly: If you buy an investment and you don't have a clear strategy for taking profits if it goes your way, or taking a small loss if it goes against you, you are not investing; you are merely gambling.

The last 2-1/2 years clearly illustrate that it is as important to be out of the market during bad times, as it is to be in the market during good times. Want proof?

According to InvesTech's monthly newsletter it turns out that, measuring from 1928 to 2002, if you started with $10 and you followed the famous buy-and-hold strategy, that $10 would become $10,957.

If you somehow missed the best 30 months, your $10 would only be $154. However, if you managed to miss the 30 worst months, your $10 would be $1,317,803! Thus, my point: Missing the worst periods has profound impact on long-run compounding. There are times when you end up better off by being out of the market.

Interestingly enough, if you missed the 30 best months and the 30 worst months, your $10 would still be worth $18,558, which is 80% higher than the buy-and-hold strategy. This all comes about because stock prices generally go down faster than they go up.

Wall Street and most people tend to overlook the value of minimizing loss, and that is exactly why the bear demolished more than 50% of many peoples' portfolios while I and those who trusted my advice escaped the worst of the beast's rampage.