The Management Tip of the Day from Harvard Business Review

July 21, 2015 Keep Your Inbox Organized for Better Focus An overflowing inbox can be a big distraction. Whether you’re catching up from last week, working through a post-vacation backlog, or just clearing out junk, taking time to organize your email will help you work more efficiently. Start by sorting your emails by sender. This will help you delete the messages you no longer need and the ones you have already responded to. Organize the rest of your messages into three folders: follow up, where you’ll file the messages you need more than a few minutes to respond to; hold, for messages that refer to an event in the future, like an invitation; and archive, for those messages you’ve responded to and want to keep a record of. Going forward, move new messages in these categories into the matching folder. Respond to, then get rid of, everything else. Adapted from Getting Work Done (20-Minute Manager).

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