Nov. 16, 2016 – For a lot of professionals, including lawyers, email is a constant headache. They pile up all day and become difficult to manage. In fact, emails may get so out-of-control that important ones are missed. For lawyers, who have ethical duties to communicate with clients and meet deadlines, email mismanagement can be serious.

But you don’t have to be a Microsoft Outlook guru to implement a system that can help manage emails, and prioritize tasks to meet deadlines and stay productive. Sure, knowing and understanding the Outlook tools available can create efficiencies. But, for many lawyers, a basic email management system can go a long way.

My Outlook book contains very specific advice on how to process and empty Inboxes. That advice includes converting all action emails to tasks, filing mail in one folder, and using the Outlook “flag tool” only for deferred replies that you intend to get to by day’s end. The goal of all this is to empty the Outlook Inbox quickly and to manage any tasks in there responsibly. The book includes a step-by-step process for this.

But the step-by-step process does not address the gray areas that we all face. So let’s talk about the real-life Outlook Inbox process that extends the steps outlined in the book and may help someone, including lawyers, with their own special circumstances.

My Outlook Inbox Process

Scanning an Inbox requires decisions. First, if an email is obviously spam or unneeded mail, I delete it immediately. I usually make a quick two-minute pass through my entire new day's worth of mail, deleting mail based on titles alone. That way I can quickly get my Inbox trimmed down and into a less overwhelming state.

Next, I start at the top of the Inbox again and march down looking at each email one at a time by quickly reading the mail or scanning the titles.

After quickly reading an email, if it’s obvious I don’t need to refer to it again later, then I delete it right after reading it. Conversely, if there is some chance I may need to refer to it again later, I don’t delete it – rather, I immediately drag it into a “Processed Mail” folder that I have created. I don’t agonize over whether to save an item or not; if there is any doubt, then I save it quickly and move on (I save a lot of mail by the way).

I used to apply “categories” to mail, leaving mail in the Inbox and then categorizing it in groups at the end of the day before dragging it all to the Processed Mail folder. These days, however, I use “Instant Search” much more, and only categorize a few items.

Therefore, group categorization is not so useful. Instead, I apply categories as I see the mail, and immediately drag them to the Processed Mail folder. In general, nothing sits in my Inbox after I’ve made a decision on it. That’s the purpose of an Inbox – to receive new mail and make decisions about it. Store mail in the Processed Mail folder.

Action Emails

The next types of mail are those emails that have some action for me to take. If I can take the action quickly – say in a minute or less – then I do the action immediately. Normally, that means a quick reply, but it might be a very quick phone call or a quick trip to a website. Once the action is done, I toss or file the mail immediately.

If the action cannot be done quickly, then I decide whether the action is a longer reply or if it’s something more. If it’s just a long reply, then I flag the e-mail with the Outlook “flag tool” and I leave it in the Inbox. I commit to making a reply quickly – within a day or so. Later, after making that reply, I remove the flag and move the item to the Processed Mail folder (or I delete it).

If the action clearly is more than just a long reply at end of day – if it requires a bit of effort or research or some time on my part to consider or complete – then I convert the email to a true task (by dragging it to the Tasks icon or label in the lower left of the Outlook screen). In the title, I enter a clear action phrase. Then I use the principles described in My Outlook book to set an appropriate priority and start date. The email is then filed to the Processed Mail folder.

Gray Areas

Let’s say I get an email and I’m not sure whether it needs a longer reply or needs more thought and potentially more action (or maybe I can even just dismiss it). In cases like that, where I am not sure, I usually want to let it sit awhile. It’s amazing how my mind will often work the question out after a couple hours, or through the course of events.

In those cases, I do this: I flag the email as if it were a deferred reply. When I come back to the email at the end of the day or the next morning, I convert it to a true task only if it truly requires action more extensive than just a reply and it cannot be done immediately. Then I remove the flag and file the email away.

Another gray area: What do I do about emails that are rather long, and I don’t have time to fully read them now (and so I don’t know yet if they need action)? The answer is “it depends.” If I think there will be some action required (I just am not sure yet), then I mark it with a flag. I just make sure I re-read the mail item later that day or early the next day and fully convert it then when I know (and then remove the flag and file it).

Again, all flagged items must be visited within a day or so (and the flags removed at that time). But if I know the email is just informational (definitely no action other than reading it), then it gets tougher. I definitely don’t flag it – that’s just for potential reply or short-term action mail. What to do really depends on how interested I am in the topic of the email. If it’s something I intend to read today, then I leave it in an unread status and keep it in the Inbox until the end of the day and read it just before I empty the Inbox.

But if it’s not worth reading today, then I might mark it with an appropriate category. “Articles” is the flag-status category I often use, but you could create a category called “For later review.” In all cases, I file it in the Processed Mail folder for later reading when appropriate.

Perhaps on a slow day, you will go through categorized mail. But more likely you will only revisit this mail during a specific search for it, which is fine. Or I just admit my lack of future time and delete it immediately; some things we know we will never get to, so we might as well cut and run now.

More about Flags

My rule of thumb is this: only flag items that you can commit to attending to within a day or two at most. If you suspect you’re going to wait longer than a day or two, then convert the email to a true task; don’t try to use a flag. Why this distinction?

You do not want to let flagged mail (or any mail) sit long in your Inbox because after a few days you will forget what the email title means and then you’ll have to reread those items to determine why you kept them in the Inbox, and re-reading mail is a big waste of time. And your Inbox gets cluttered with too much old mail. So just get them out of there. Leave the Inbox clear for processing new mail – that’s the role of the Inbox.

More on this. Longer-term tasks need management tools, and the flag tool does not provide them. You need an easily set priority, a start date, and especially a rewritten subject line that you can scan quickly. With those set, you can then manage tasks in bulk in the task system. You cannot set those easily in flagged mail. There are other ways, but they’re harder to use, and flagged tasks have other disadvantages.

At the end of the day, I try to file away all the rest of my mail, and I only leave behind flagged mail I cannot yet process. But if a flagged mail item gets more than two or three days old, then I bite the bullet and convert it to a true task no matter what.

To make that possible, I sometimes use creative task names like “Make decision on this email about …” or “consider more fully this email about …” Just find a way to get it converted to a task (with a clear next action in the title) and get it out of the Inbox.

By the way, never leave a flag on an item that you move to the Processed Mail folder; they serve no purpose there and clog up your To-Do Bar task list. Remove all flags before you move the mail.

So that’s it! That’s my real life story of how I process mail in my Outlook Inbox. I hope the extra details I show here, and my coverage of special cases, helps you in your email processing.