In addition to good filters, flags, folders, rules, and search, it seems that sometimes there is no way around a good old fashioned email headache (I think I get on average about 30-40 work emails per day). Although you cannot control how your senders organize their emails, when they send them, how frequently they send them, or how they format them, it is your duty to maintain organization and minimize headaches for recipients of your emails. Hopefully karma applies to email traffic…

1. Minimize emails! Take an extra minute or two to gain all your thoughts around a subject. Create the email as a draft and come back to it later. By minimizing the amount of emails that end up in other people’s inboxes, it will help manage and maintain email threading as well as package your organized, detailed, well-worded thoughts in your email communications.

2. Keep threads going when appropriate. Well-titled subject lines should stick around like discussion board threads. If you are responding to an email that arrived a week ago, find that last email in the thread and reply to it. Maintaining the breadcrumb of communication will assist in your own personal work efficiency and desktop organization and additionally allow all parties involved the ability to see what has been discussed previously.