How to Use Project Management Principles to Better Manage Your Inbox
Email overwhelm is a serious productivity killer. Navigating an overwhelming, disorganized inbox takes up significant time in your day — time you could be spending on the focused work that really matters.
If you want to be successful and productive, you need to get out of email overwhelm. And one of the best ways to do that is to treat email like a project and apply project management principles to managing your inbox.
Project management principles are the key to successfully managing projects from beginning to end; they’re what foster organization, efficiency, and flow. And while you can leverage these principles to manage any type of project, they can be especially helpful for managing your inbox.
Let’s take a look at how to use project management principles to better manage your inbox — and dramatically increase your productivity in the process:
Principle #1: Set clear objectives and goals
In project management, setting clear objectives and goals from the get-go is a non-negotiable; if you don’t know what you’re ultimately trying to accomplish — and how you’re going to get there — it’s impossible to determine success.
This also applies when the project in question is getting a better handle on your inbox.
Before you tackle your email overwhelm project, make sure to set clear objectives and goals. For example, are you trying to banish all the marketing emails cluttering your inbox? To find a way to prioritize important messages? Or to get to that elusive inbox zero?
Whatever you’re trying to accomplish, make sure to define it from the beginning — as it will drive the rest of your project. It can also help to break down larger, more ambiguous goals into smaller, more manageable and actionable tasks. So, for example, if your ultimate goal is to have a more streamlined, organized inbox, you might break that larger goal down into smaller, more actionable tasks, like researching email management tools and unsubscribing from marketing emails.
Principle #2: Define metrics for success
When you’re managing a project, it’s important to define how you’ll measure success along the way. For example, will you measure success by hitting established deadlines? Creating all your deliverables? Or launching a new product on time?
The same goes for managing your inbox.
As you tackle your email management project, set your metrics for success; that way, you can evaluate how successful you are along the way — and make any changes or adjustments as needed. For example, you might measure success by how much you’re able to cut back on the time you spend on email each day, with an ultimate goal of cutting down your time by 50%. Or you might set a metric of lowering the number of unnecessary emails in your inbox (for example, by unsubscribing to marketing emails and clearing your inbox of spam and/or old, unnecessary emails).
Bottom line? You won’t know if your email management project is successful if you’re not clear on how you’re going to measure that success — so make sure to define your metrics at the start of your project.
Principle #3: Get — and stay — organized
If you want to successfully manage a project, getting — and staying — organized is an absolute must.
And organization is just as important for better managing your inbox.
A well-managed inbox is a well-organized one. When your inbox is organized, important emails don’t fall through the cracks. You can find the emails you’re looking for, when you need them. And you can immediately identify emails that you don’t need — and get them out of your inbox, clearing space for the messages that matter most.
So how, exactly, do you organize your inbox? While different strategies work for different people, some things you’ll want to consider include:
- Get rid of clutter. It’s hard to organize your inbox if it’s chock full of unnecessary or irrelevant emails. Clear your inbox of any clutter and create space for your most urgent and important emails.
- Sort emails into folders. Once you’ve cleared out the clutter, it’s time to organize the messages that are left. Create relevant folders and sort emails accordingly (for example, if you’re organizing your work inbox, you might create folders for different projects — and then put the emails for each project into the corresponding folder).
- Create systems to track and respond to urgent messages. Part of the reason it’s important to organize your inbox is to ensure you don’t miss any urgent messages — so you’ll also want to create a system for tracking and responding to important emails (for example, setting up reminders to follow up.
Principle #4: Use the right tools for the project
To effectively manage a project — including your inbox — you need the right tools.
And when it comes to managing your inbox, the right tools? SaneBox and Proofhub.
SaneBox leverages AI to deliver everything you need to effectively manage your inbox — and dramatically increase your productivity in the process — including:
- SaneBlackHole. Get rid of unwanted emails in one click with SaneBlackHole — and never receive another message from that sender again.
- SaneLater. Have emails you want to keep — but don’t want them to show up in your inbox everyday? SaneLater will store those emails so you can get to them when you have the time and desire — and also send you a daily summary to let you know what you missed.
- SaneReminders. Waiting on a response to an important email? SaneReminders will let you know if an email hasn’t been responded to in a certain time frame — giving you the nudge you need to stay on top of it and follow up.
And while managing your inbox itself is a project, it’s also a place where you can organize and manage other projects — and that’s where Proofhub comes in. Proofhub isn’t just a project management platform; it seamlessly integrates into your email, creating email-in addresses for each project — and allowing you to create, send, and reply to project-related tasks directly from your inbox.
Bottom line? SaneBox will get your inbox under control — and with Proofhub, you can use your inbox to better manage your projects.
Ready to use SaneBox to manage your email project? Here’s a $25 credit to get you started
Use project management principles to better manage your inbox
Managing your inbox is a project. But now that you understand how to apply project management principles to your inbox, you’re armed with the information you need to make your inbox project a successful one.
Author: By Thomas Yuan from SaneBox
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