E-Mail Tip 15: Categories, Hierarchical

When you aim for zero with your three possibility strategy you must have somewhere to file those mails which will/may be needed in the future. Categories are the answer and hierarchical categories are an even better answer. If you have a lot of meetings, that's probably going to be a big category. It might then be sub-categorised with the types of meeting (finance, team, XYZ project) and those then sub-categorised further by perhaps dates of meetings or names of people. You decide what helps you file and find. Search will usually get you out of a bind but great categorisation also helps history and bigger picture to be seen.

TBC

In the meantime: 

1. How To Lessen E-mail Pain, free download.
2. The Business Skills Collection: fast, pragmatic, budget amazon e-read.

Plus:

• Tip 1: Keep it Short
• Tip 2: Don't cc
• Tip 3: Don't send a mail
• Tip 4: Batch Process
• Tip 5: What Do you Want?
• Tip 6: Days Without
• Tip 7: Dig Deeper
• Tip 8: Don't Do It First
• Tip 9: Make 'no action' easy.
• Tip 10: Stop the Cascade
• Tip 11: Let Go of Reptile Brain
• Tip 12: Let Them Know You're On It
• Tip 13: Get to Zero
• Tip 14: Only 3 Possibilities