Help!!! My Inbox is OVERFLOWING: 3 Tips to Tackle Email Overwhelm

Every so often, I do a survey for my community to see themes of needs that help me know how to serve. The most recent, not too shockingly, showed that many of my counselors in the trenches are feeling completed overwhelmed by their inbox.

I’ve always been a fan of turning off notifications to prevent you from feeling constantly pulled in all directions and in most instances I’m completely opposed to having your work email on your personal phone. But I think people needed some more practical ways to walk out email boundaries in real life.

So, in my recent training, we talked about how taking care of yourself includes managing those technical and daily logistical tasks that bog you down. Here are a few of the steps I suggest for getting your inbox under control.

Reduce what comes in

This tip is worth its weight in gold. I use the website UNROLL.ME to unsubscribe from email lists that no longer serve me. You have two options with this tool, one is to unsubscribe completely and never get an email from that sender again, the other is to create a ROLL-UP which is one, yes ONE email with links to all the emails in one. This lets you see one email instead of dozens, you can quickly skim the list and go deeper with anything you what or when you’re too busy, just delete this one email and move on. THIS IS A GAMECHANGER. If you regularly sign up for freebies, you’d be amazed how many lists you’re actually on and this is probably a big part of why you inbox is exploding. I do this a couple times a year and it’s a perfectly mindless activity that can be done while waiting on the kids at the dentist, so there’s my little side note, LOL!

Categorize what comes in

Train your staff, students and families to use SUBJECT LINES that you can categorize into folders. Check the video below where I show you how I organized one of my Gmail boxes, but most providers including outlook which works with most email sources can give you the same effect. You can create folders, filtering rules and set priority senders by so that your inbox is automatically organized. Then when you sit down to check your inbox, you can know what is most important to address.

Control how emails go out

This one might be a little controversial if you are a person who likes to immediately respond to emails, but I suggest setting up a schedule for when you'll view emails and creating an autoresponder that tells people exactly that.

Most people only use autoresponders when they are going to be away for an extended period of time, but really you can give yourself a personal assistant to answer your messages just by setting it up. Choose the most common themes of email requests that you get, maybe schedule changes, classroom conflicts or something like that. Set up a schedule, either every day or several times per week when you will routinely check on those items set your filter to put all of those emails in one folder and then set your autoresponder to tell people when they can look for an email from you with an answer. Something like, “I check emails daily at 10am and 2pm and I’ll do my best to be in touch with a response within 48 hours from the time you’ve reached out”. I also suggest adding some common FAQ or frequently requested information that they might need. Depending on what you see most often you can include links to videos about how to reset your powerschool password, local food pantries or whatever would help those reaching out to you.

This solves a couple problems, people know you received their message because they got a response, they are more likely to read the response and may get their question answered immediately AND it teaches them not to expect your attention instantly, since that’s unrealistic and puts pressure on you. See, win, win, WIN!

So, do you have any special email inbox or time management hacks? Share in the comments below!