Apple Mail: Organisation without folders

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Summary

Email is vitally important, but many overcomplicate it with folders. Apple Mail is the simplest and best, and you don’t need folders because search works really well now. Treat email like a phone call: deal with it, take notes elsewhere, then archive it. Get rid of your folders and you’ll be way more organised.

Raw

Email is vitally important to any business. Now, obviously, everyone uses email, so everyone knows how to use email. There are a bunch of email apps out there that someone can pick up email and they just know how to use it. It’s like riding a bike. Email is one of those things that everyone knows.

And for a business, it’s vitally important because that’s how you communicate with your clients. Generally, you have a contact form on your website. You talk to your clients via email. Email is incredibly important.

Now, being the MacJunky, I deal with companies who have Apple, the Apple ecosystem, so Apple Macs, phones and stuff. Even though there are third-party mail apps, and I’ve used pretty much 99% of them, and I kid you not, I really have. The one that I keep coming back to, and I talk about this all the time, is Apple Mail due to its simplicity. I actually made a video about it last week or the week before.

Now, the way people use it is kind of complicated because I see this all the time. They have a bunch of folders on the side. I made a video two years ago, actually, even about crazy email folders.

Now, I’m here to tell you that you don’t need folders, especially nowadays with the new computers. And I say the new computers, because the operating system’s got so good that when you’re searching for something, you can find it just like that. It’s really, really simple. So having folders just complicates things for you. So because it’s just another step, something else to do rather than dealing with that email.

So, how do you use Apple Mail without folders? Easy. Stop using folders.

You have folders already built in. Folders in the sense of your inbox is effectively a folder. And your archive is effectively a folder. So something comes in, you deal with it, you delegate it, you put it into your task manager or your CRM. And it’s gone, then get it out and put it into your archive.

So once you deal with it, put it into your archive. Now, as I said, when you deal with it, you either deal with it there or you do do it with the other, with the task manager or the CRM. I said that twice. This is weird. So, but if you can deal with it there and then, you deal with it and then you archive it. Why are you putting it into a folder?

Now, many say to me, well, I need to know where all my financial stuff is. I need to know where all my stuff from Uncle Bob is and stuff from Auntie Mary is and so on and so forth. And it blows my mind that people do that because that in itself makes things complicated. They may think it’s easy because then I just go to folder Bob or folder Mary and I know everything is. Well, yes, that’s yes. But it’s complicated in the sense that you have to put it there, right? You have to think, is this for finance? Is this for home? Is this for business?

So just dealing with the items in an email, because email shouldn’t be your task manager. I’m going to talk about this in another video. Email should be a communication tool. It’s like the phone. If someone phones you up, you talk about it, you take notes, you put it in your notebook, and then you put the phone down.

So email is effectively the same thing, but text format. Someone’s calling you, emailing you. You deal with it. you take notes in the relevant places and then you put it away. So you don’t need a massive filing system in your email once you have the other places in place as well. And I’m going to talk about those in another email.

So back to what I was saying, get rid of your folders and you’ll be better organised. It’s kind of a reverse way of looking at it. But get rid of your folders, you’ll be way more organised.

Anyway, hopefully that helps. If you need help with your email, or you just wanted to have a chat, I’ll put a link below to book a call with me. Have a great day, and I’ll see you in the next one. Ciao.