How to conquer your e-mail inbox by Susan Adams is a compelling call to action.  She challenges us to get organized and immediately fights our human need to resist change by enlisting the help of expert Mark Hurst, the author of Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-Mail Overload, to make a further compelling argument.

Hurst suggests that the first step to inbox heaven is understanding that emails should be sorted into three different categories.

1.  Irrelevant – Spam and “reply all” notes from colleagues.

2.  Relevant but not actionable – FYI information.  This is information you need to be know and possible retain for further review.

3.  Actionable – Work.  This email usually comes from your boss or a client.

Once we have completed our initial sort we must then de-clutter the inbox by immediately deleting all irrelevant emails and then move our relevant but not actionable emails to an archive folder.   What next?  Hurst suggests that we move our actionable emails to a separate “to-do” folder and tackle them from there.

This Critical Hire writer plans to make a genuine effort to sort and tackle her inbox the Hurst’s way.  After all, Hurst does remind us that our inbox is a sacred place only to be used for temporary storage and enlists us to use our basic time management skills to stay organized.