What it was:

Various conversations on on how to deal with large volumes of emails this year.

What I learned:

Aim to deal with emails with ‘one touch’:

• No more than two minutes on each one, ideally 5 seconds
• Leave ones that will require substantive action for later
• Always respond to ones from bosses/senior customers, and prioritise these responses
• Reply immediately to say if you will be unable to meet the deadline
• Capture the ones requiring substantive action somewhere else e.g. your action tracker

There are lots of different approaches to folders: simplest is just to have four: inbox, deletable archive, keep archive, personal archive. Your aim is to get everything out of the inbox ASAP.
If your email system allows, use labels/categories to sort emails, but get the software to assign the labels itself through rules

What I will aim to do differently as a result:

Make time every week for getting my work inbox down
Remind myself of this list
Set myself a challenge to see how much I can reduce my personal (non work) inbox in an hour