You’re pretty consistent at staying on top of your email. But now you’re going on vacation, or on a business trip, or you know that you’re going to be too busy working on a project. Just the thought of all those unanswered emails piling up while you’re gone from the office is enough to give you a least a little bit of a sinking feeling.
We all experience email hell from time to time. It can be difficult to stay on top of your Inbox even with a regular routine.
If you’ve got good email organization (read my blog post here: 4 Steps to Becoming More Responsive), you already have the less important emails filtered out of your inbox. So when you return, you know that you have to deal with everything that’s landed in your inbox.
If you follow the steps below, it can help you to relax when you’re away from the office. You’ll be able to get back on top of things when you return, easily avoiding email hell.
- Set up a filter for your most important people – your “VIPs”. That way, when you return, you can go to those folders first. See my blog post about filters here: How to De-Clutter Your Email Inbox.
- Set up a temporary filter for everything else, so that email goes into a “Catch up” folder. You’ll work on this folder as you have time. I suggest that you start dealing with the oldest email that came into your inbox after you left the office down to the newest.
- Set up an “out-of-office” auto-response, so that you’re not letting people wondering about your delayed reply.
When you return, make sure to turn off your auto-response and delete the “Catch up” filter. You can also remove the VIP filters. Or, you can leave them in place if you know that you’ll remember to check those folders first thing every day.
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