Organizing your email using the Eisenhower matrix

I don't know about you, but my Inbox is rarely empty and stuff comes into it all the time. We run this rat race of reacting to emails sent to us daily. Every morning, we look at our Inbox, there's 300 messages in there and it's exhausting to think of, let alone actually reviewing and responding to them.

I've written previously about the Eisenhower matrix and how useful it is for me. I've now started applying that principle to email with classification and visual aids. Here's how it goes - I will note that you need to have some familiarity with Outlook capabilities to implement this (this is not a guided tutorial). If there's real interest in a guided tutorial (let me know in comments!), I'll put together a quick one.

• I've created 3 new Categories in Outlook (Eisenhower - Urgent, Eisenhower - Nor urgent, and Eisenhower - Delegate).
• I have 2 simple rules that I apply (through Outlook Rules) on all incoming email

1. If it's sent by someone important to me (e.g. my boss, the CFO, any of our CTOs, any of our CISOs, and a few others), I auto-categorize to Eisenhower - Urgent.
2. All other emails are auto-categorized as Eisenhower - Not urgent.

• In my Inbox view, I setup a Conditional Formatting view that says:

1. If the category is Eisenhower - Urgent, display it red.
2. If the category is Eisenhower - Not urgent, display it green.
3. If the category is Eisenhower - Delegate, display it grey. See below for a facsimile of my real Inbox. Pretty neat, right?

That's the initial setup. Now, here's my process:

1. Yes, I do have to go back through all my emails and categorize them (one-time). They turn color immediately.
2. All incoming emails are auto-categorized and colored.
3. My process is simply this: I scan my Inbox. If I have to pick one email to respond to, it's likely the oldest Urgent one (because it's important and I've put it off). Then the next. And so on, until the Urgents are done. Then, start on the Greens.

Of course, there are caveats - some emails might actually be Urgent, but auto-classified Not urgent. Don't worry about it. Do a sweep twice a day to catch those and reclassify them. You may also want to get to urgent emails in a different order than I do. Fine - you do you. What I'm saying is that this method visually focuses you on the emails you need to be addressing first. If you have a tight enough filter, you'll get to the 80/20 rule of email response. And isn't that what we all want?

I did look for paid tools for this and there are some. They're rather heavy though and since I already use categories and rules, this was a simple 30 minute no-friction change for me. How about you? How do you manage your Inbox?

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Aurobindo Sundaram is a security executive with 20+ years of experience in the information security space. He has written code that went into Windows NT, met Bill Gates, visited all 50 US states, and he really, really enjoys Sichuan cuisine. The opinions presented above are his personal views and are not those of any organization with which he is affiliated. All his LinkedIn Short Articles are available here.