Amazingly Efficient Email Management

This post was just going to be titled 'Email Management' but that's not very exciting is it - and I have to say I am so impressed with my new system of email management.

I have tried various systems over the years including:

- regular weeding, i.e. unsubscribing, of newsletters that I don't read (I still do this)

- tagging emails

- filtering emails (both of these are part of the new system)

- only answering emails certain times of the day (this really does work but my business being a techy one so much of the correspondence is email and I didn't want to export all of my emails to my project planner and clutter it up)

The new system

What's the new system then? I can hear you asking.  Well it is simply this:

• ensure that you have different emails for work and personal stuff.  In fact I have two main jobs so I have three email addresses that I use regularly - two work and one personal
  
• set up rules within your email program.  All email programs will do this but sometimes they are called filters.  I use Gmail so I set up filters.
  
• filter your emails to go into their respective folders.  So I leave all personal mail in the inbox and work mail is filtered out into named folders.  Then when I am working on a specific job, I can just work from that email box and see emails relating only to that work.

Simple isn't it?  But I am so impressed by how effective it is.  Although I do flip out to look at other emails in other folders, it is much easier to be more disciplined if you can only see emails relating to your current work.  And I have definitely become more focussed by organising my emails this way. And it means I can stay working from my email box without feeling overwhelmed.

Bullet journalling with The Arc

I have really got into bullet journalling this year.  I have been keeping a journal - or diary as I think of it - for many many years now and also a planner.  So I wasn't really sure how bullet journalling would fit in, but I had been working on and tweaking my planner layouts for quite a while.  What I didn't realise was that I was moving towards bullet journalling, almost organically!

What is bullet journalling?

Bullet journalling is a way of keeping a record or note of - well practically anything really.  There is a good introduction to bullet journalling here:  http://bulletjournal.com/  but if you want something rather prettier (and really inspiring) take a look at Boho Berry.  You can use bullet journals for to do lists, notes, tracking various things, ideas, artwork, all kinds of things.

It seems that many people keep everything in their one journal but I am still running a planner and a 'diary' which I use as follows:

What's in my Planner

• Overview of the week
• daily 'to do' list
• appointments
• a 'quick view' of the main events of the day
• a year list
• a six month list
• then various layouts for specific things such as holidays or projects I am working on

What's in my diary

• an overview of the day
• moods and feelings
• mood tracker
• moon and weather tracker

What do I use?

Many people buy specific bullet journals with the grid background.  My diary is a standard lined notebook and my planner is an Arc folder from Staples.  I have used Arc folders for many years and love the flexibility that you can add, remove and move pages as you clip the pages in on a ring system.  I purchased a punch so that I can print my own pages and then punch them to fit in the planner.  This gives me full flexibility in the way I lay out the planner pages and they do change quite regularly.  Below is my latest layout for Spring.  The grid background is new (today!) so I will see whether that works or whether I prefer a plain background which is what I had before.

My Arc is A5 so the sheet below is printed A4 and then cut in half to fit in the planner - that's why there is a gap in the middle!

Click here to see the Staples Arc folders.

Let me know if you bullet journal and what your favourite page layouts are.