Organize Outlook Inbox With Five Simple Habits (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: If your Outlook inbox is overflowing with emails, newsletters, reminders, and messages you still need to respond to, the problem might not be how much email you get, it might be how your inbox is organized. I'm Elizabeth, and in this video, I'll show you five simple ways to organize your Outlook inbox and get email under control. Then, at the end, I'll show you a different approach using superhuman mail that can automate much of the work we're about to do manually. Instead of manually moving the same types of messages over and over again, Outlook can do it for you automatically. For example, maybe I get a weekly newsletter from my marketing team that I want to keep, but I don't necessarily need it sitting in my main inbox. I'll start by selecting Settings, go to the Mail icon, and then select Rules, and here I'll add my rule for marketing emails. Now I'll add a condition. In this case, anything that comes from this particular email address, I want to move directly to a specific folder. So I'll Organize, and I'll select the folder that I want it to go to, in this case, Marketing Newsletters. Once this rule is saved, future emails from this sender will skip my main inbox and go straight into my Marketing Newsletter folder. You can use rules for all sorts of things. You might want to flag any email from a particular client or your manager flagged as high importance, or any email with a specific word in the subject line to go to a specific folder. Even with the best rules in place, you're still likely to receive plenty of emails that don't really apply to you. One useful trick is to create a rule for messages where your email address isn't listed as a direct recipient. You can automatically move those emails into a separate folder, so you still keep them without letting them clutter up your main inbox, and you can review them later. Folders are useful, but sometimes you don't actually want to move an email somewhere else. You just want to know what you need to do with it. That's where categories can help. Instead of creating 20 different categories, I'd recommend keeping it simple. For example, you could have Action Required, Waiting, and Important, and maybe some categories for your personal email, or major projects, or specific areas of your work. To categorize an email, simply right-click it, select Categorize, and then select the category you want. In this case, I don't have time to respond right now, but my action is required on this email. And let's say I have an email that I've already responded to, but now I'm waiting for them to respond to me before I take action. I can categorize that as Waiting. Now, rather than trying to remember why every email is still sitting in my inbox, I can immediately see what needs my attention. Try not to create such a complicated organization system that managing your system becomes another job. A few simple categories will usually work much better. And if this seems too cumbersome or manual of a process, I'm going to show you an easier way to automatically categorize your emails using Superhuman Mail in just a bit. Here's a habit that get a lot of people into trouble. You open an email and realize that you need to do something with it later. So you mark the email as unread. Then you end up with 147 unread emails. Instead, Outlook gives you tools to help manage this. Here I have an email that's asking me to send something to my manager by 3 p.m. today. I don't want to handle it right now, but I know I need to get back to it soon. So I can flag this email, and then when I go back to my inbox, I'll see that my action is required. However, here's an email where I don't need to manage it until Friday. So instead of just marking this as unread so I don't forget it, instead I'm going to snooze it. Snoozing something doesn't mean that it's deleted. It just means that the email is going to disappear until you choose for it to reappear. In this case, I don't need to manage this email until Friday. So I'll select Friday at 8 a.m., click on save, and now the email has disappeared from my inbox and it won't reappear until Friday at 8 a.m. This means that everything left in my inbox is much more likely to be something I actually need to deal with now. Another great way to organize your inbox is with quick steps, which are especially useful when you find yourself performing the same series of actions over and over again. For example, whenever I finish dealing with an email from this particular client, I want to mark it as read. I then want to move it to my specific client folder and mark the email as complete. By creating a quick step, you can do that with just a single click or keyboard shortcut. Or maybe you regularly receive emails that you need to forward to somebody else on your team, or in this case to an outside vendor. I'll categorize these messages as being part of Project Apollo and automatically forward them to my vendor team. To create your own, select create new quick step on your taskbar. I'm going to create a handle leader quick step, moving these messages into a specific folder and then flagging them for follow-up so it gets out of my main inbox without getting forgotten. It's a small feature, but if you process a lot of email, it could save a surprising amount of time. My final outlook tip is probably the simplest. Use archive a lot. Once you finish dealing with an email, you usually don't need it sitting in your inbox anymore, but that doesn't mean you want to delete it and you don't want to create hundreds of folders for every possible type of email. Select the email and archive it. It disappears from your inbox but remains available if you ever need to search for it later. If you get into this habit, maintaining a clean inbox becomes much easier. Now all five of these techniques can make Outlook dramatically easier to manage, but there's still one catch. You have to set up the system and maintain quite a bit of it yourself. And that brings us to today's partner, Superhuman Mail, which is part of the Superhuman productivity suite. Superhuman Mail takes a different approach by automating more of the email organization for you, which can make keeping a clean inbox much easier. It uses AI to handle more of that organization for you, so you spend less time deciding what every message is and more time actually dealing with the email that matters. And the goal here isn't just to clean your inbox once, it's to make getting back to inbox zero something you can realistically repeat. Let's say I open my inbox after lunch and I'm unsure of what to tackle first. Some emails are important, some are newsletters or ads, some are notifications, and some actually require a response. With Superhuman Mail's auto labels, incoming email can automatically be categorized into groups like respond, notifications, marketing, and news. You could create custom labels as well. Here's an email from my manager asking for contact information of a client. Superhuman Mail recognizes that this needs a response and labels it accordingly. Here's another message where I'm simply being kept updated. This is marked as FYI, and it's also marked as a marketing newsletter. And then you could see I received a lot of marketing promotional emails while I was away from my computer. Those are categorized separately. Instead of treating all of these messages like equally important decisions, I can immediately start with the emails that actually need something from me, helping me prioritize my work and saving me time. Superhuman Mail can also use auto archive to keep lower priority messages from cluttering your inbox in the first place. This could include marketing emails, automated notifications, or other messages you might want to keep, but don't necessarily need competing for your attention. Instead of repeatedly cleaning them out yourself, they can automatically move out of the way. And fewer unnecessary messages in front of you means fewer distractions you have to make every time you open your inbox. Then there's split inbox. This separates different types of email into their own views. For example, if marketing social and newsletters are routed into separate split inboxes, your primary inbox can stay focused on the conversations that matter most. So rather than seeing an important client email sandwiched between a newsletter, a shipping notification, three promotions, and a calendar update, I can focus on one type of email at a time. This makes it much easier to respond, archive, and move through the inbox quickly without constantly getting distracted by messages that don't need action right now. And again, this makes getting to inbox zero much more manageable because you're working through a prioritized inbox instead of one giant pile of email. My favorite feature is auto reminders. Here's a situation that happens all the time. I send someone an important email. Can you send me the final contract? They don't respond with the contract. Three days go by, then five. Normally, I either have to remember that I'm waiting on them, create some type of reminder myself, or keep the original conversation sitting in my inbox because I'm afraid that I'll forget about it. Superhuman mail can handle that automatically. When you send an email that appears to need a response, it can remind you if the other person doesn't reply. If they respond, great, nothing else needs to happen. If they don't, the conversation comes back to your attention when it's time to follow up. That means I don't have to leave an email sitting in my inbox just to remember that I'm waiting for someone. You could create individual reminders as well. That way I could clear my inbox and trust that messages will come back when I actually need it. That removes both inbox clutter and some of the mental tracking that normally goes along with email. And superhuman mail can take that one step further with auto drafts. Auto reminders and auto drafts work really nicely together because one helps you remember when to respond and the other one reduces the work involved in actually responding. Together, that means less mental tracking and fewer emails hanging around simply because you're afraid you might forget something. I can also use the AI writing assistant for help with my responses. When it identifies that you need to follow up, it will prepare the message for you. So instead of reopening the thread and thinking, okay, what do I say now? I already have a starting point. I can review my options for response and make any changes or additions I want in the placeholders that superhuman mail provides to me. And if you use AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude, superhuman mail also supports MCP, which lets those tools work with context from your inbox and calendar. So you could do things like summarize messages or prepare for meetings without switching between apps. Now I know Inbox Zero can sometimes sound like one of those productivity goals where you clean everything up once and then three days later, you're right back where you started. What I like about this approach is that the automation is still there tomorrow. Your labels are still organizing new messages. Your split inboxes are still separating distractions. Auto archive is still removing clutter and auto reminders are still keeping track of conversations you're waiting on. So rather than Inbox Zero being a giant cleanup project, it could start to become part of your normal routine. And superhuman mail actually gives you a little visual celebration when you reach Inbox Zero. If you want to try superhuman mail, check out the promotion they are offering to our viewers in the description and the pinned comment below. Whether you use Outlook, superhuman mail, or another email app entirely, the biggest takeaway is this. Your inbox shouldn't become permanent storage or a running list of everything you're afraid you might forget. Automatically move out the messages that don't need your attention, clearly identify what actually requires action, and build a system that helps the right messages come back at the right time. The less mental energy you have to spend keeping track of your inbox, the easier it becomes to keep it under control. You don't necessarily have to reach Inbox Zero every day, but you can get much closer to something that's arguably more useful. An inbox where you actually know what needs your attention. Thanks for watching.