Did you know that this week is National Get Organized Week?
Yep, and it was declared so by the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) in 1992! (Which might be about the last time you can remember organizing your desktop) 😉
So today I’m sharing a few tips you can use to organize your inbox!
Inbox organization can be a constant struggle for many of us, and create a lot of anxiety when you don’t know whether or not you missed something important.
Some people might suggest only checking your email 2 or 3 times a day, but for many of us that’s not an option.
Or you may have tried using filters or multiple mailboxes to stay organized… and it worked for about a week!
Here’s the system that has helped me to stay organized in my inbox for the past year!
For every single email, you need to either:
- React to it immediately (if it is urgent).
- Delegate it to someone else.
- Assign it to yourself in Asana to work on later (if it requires more time or is not urgent).
Asana is a helpful project management system that is a happy inbox’s best friend. The beauty of it is it lets you turn emails into a task in their system, straight from your inbox.
How it works is – you can forward an email to a specific address created by Asana, which allows you to assign the task to yourself OR to a team member.
Without having to open up the application itself, you are able to easily delegate it to someone else or set up the task for yourself for later.
This creates so much peace of mind, because you know every message that comes through will be taken care of. Even if you are in the midst of a crazy busy workday!
I’m all about progress over perfection, and I’m a work in progress myself. 😉 Utilizing Asana helps me to capture information so it doesn’t get lost, give it a deadline, or associate it with a client or project. It’s a lot less overwhelming than if I had hundreds or thousands of emails in my inbox.
You can get a free Asana account here and try it out for yourself!
I credit this system to the team over at Lifehack Bootcamp – I took their productivity course last year and it helped me tremendously! If you’d like to increase your productivity and organization, I encourage you to check out their site here.
Let us know how your organization goes this week by leaving a comment below! 🙂
‘Til next time,
Sandy
