Gadget of the Month

BILL & PHIL’S GADGET OF THE MONTH Time to Spring Clean Your Email | Bill Ramsey & Phillip Hampton

It’s spring cleaning time! Now that we have “sprung forward” to Daylight Savings Time, we should all start thinking about cleaning up our clutter, or as Marie Kondo says: It is time to engage in the “life-changing magic of tidying up.” Your email inbox is a good place to start.

The Old-Fashioned Methods (Manual Clean Up)

There many methods for manual clean up. It seems that, like opinions, everybody has one. The question is which methods actually work? We will try to summarize and synthesize them here. In other words, we will try to “declutter” the methods. The first step is to delete the items that are clearly trash at the outset. One easy way to get this done is to sort your email inbox by sender. Simply delete messages that are from social media accounts, retail ads, past event reminders, delivery confirmations, out-of-date newsletters, etc. Then sort again by subject line and do the same thing. In other words, delete the emails from senders whose messages are no longer important (or were never important) and any messages that are no longer relevant.

The next step is to clean out your oldest messages. Start with the oldest unread messages and deal with them. Then go to the oldest messages that you have already read and responded to. If they are no longer needed in your inbox archive them or put them into folders by category.

Speaking of folders, the next step is to create folders and labels that apply to topics or senders that have several messages that would fall into the same category. But, be careful, if you create too many folders you will defeat the purpose. Add “labels” or Outlook “categories” to further organize each folder. Then create an “on hold” folder for emails for which you cannot decide whether to keep, act upon, or sort to a folder. Work on this “on hold” folder when you are on a break. Do not keep the items in this folder for more than one week. Then, identify all emails with the word “unsubscribe” in the text somewhere. If it is a newsletter or email that you are really not interested in anymore, go ahead and unsubscribe to avoid recurring clutter.

Now, you should be left with only emails that need action. If you can act on the email in two minutes go ahead and git ‘er done. If you need more time, add it to your to-do list and send yourself a notification to remind you to do it. (You can do the same thing with Gmail’s “snooze” feature or Outlook’s “follow up” feature.)

The last step is to keep the clutter from coming back. Set up filters in Gmail or Outlook to automatically file emails into categories for response. Again, if you can respond quickly, go ahead and respond asap. If not, put in a “respond later” folder. And use the autoreply function with messages if you are away for an extended period of time.

Of course, Bill insisted that we include advice from his hero, Marie Kondo. Her steps are as follows. First, tidy your home. This will heighten you sensitivity to joy and you will learn to choose what is valuable to you. Then start on your digital cleanup, which must be done all at once. Fully commit yourself to tidying. Then begin making decisions. First, does the email “spark joy”? If the answer is yes, keep it and put into a “spark joy” folder. Then, create an “important documents” folder and put the emails you need to keep in that folder. Then, delete the rest. Stop keeping “komono” (items to keep “just because”). If the item is not important or does not “spark joy”, thank it for its service and let it go with gratitude. Then begin to organize into folders. Keep the folders simple. Marie recommends only “saved” and “unprocessed.” Use the “search” function to find emails you are looking for. Delete or archive emails when you are finished with them, but, again, thank them for their service.

The “Hi-Tech” Method (Let the Computer Do It for You)

There are several digital tools available to help you spring clean your email box. Here are some notable options.

We have not tried ZERØ Email Management Software yet, but are intrigued by it. We are certainly going to order a demo of the app and try it out. ZERØ supposedly applies “artificial intelligence and smart automation” for an email management solution designed specifically for lawyers. They claim that it allows lawyers to save time filing emails. Allegedly, it automatically analyzes your emails together or individually and automatically files them by client. It works on mobile devices, desktops, and laptops. It also tracks the time you spent on the email, assigns it to a client and creates a matching time entry. We will see if it works.

Mailstrom is another tool that sup(continued on page 16)

posedly uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help you clean out your inbox. It “guesses” what you think is important and identifies bundles of emails and allows you to deal with them as a group. It also allows you to block unwanted emails with one click, unsubscribe from emails with one click, and so forth.

Cleanfox works with all messaging providers and apps. It finds all the newsletters you receive in your inbox, sorts them by criteria (such as whether you open them or not or how long you look at them), and recommends deleting or unsubscribing.

Boomerang only works with Gmail. With this tool, you can write an email now and send it later “at the perfect time.” It also will remove messages from your inbox and put them back in your inbox and marked at the time of your choosing. Additionally, Boomerang offers reminders to follow up if you don’t hear back from an email you sent.

SaneBox has been around since 2010, and is a great tool. It works with your habits to identify important messages, stop emails when you trigger “do not disturb,” gets rid of annoying senders, and reminds you to follow up. You begin the process by giving SaneBox access to your entire inbox, whether it is Outlook, Gmail, iCloud, or any other provider. It never looks at the content of your emails, but it will determine what emails are important by determining whether you open them and if so, how long you keep them open and how quickly you respond, if at all. You then go to your inbox for the important emails and the others are moved to your “SaneLater” folder for you to deal with later or trash. Happy Cleaning! n

PEACE MAN, GET OFF YOUR ANALOG & GET IN THE CLOUD!

How do you get real Peace internet voice in your office thatʼs less expensive and less of a hassle? All you have to do is unplug your current phone system and plug us in! With our Cloud Hosted PBX, customers can save up to 40 percent on their monthly bill, not to mention all the advanced features that come along with it. Now thatʼs groovy man!

FIRST 60 DAYS FREE! VISIT WWW.PEACECOM.NET/PBX