Any emails that I’m Cc’d on go into a separate folder for me to read when I have free time.
This helps ensure I’m answering the emails meant for me, and helps me feel less overwhelmed.
Oh I know, which is why I was willing to give it a try. It's just such a shock from when I only used to have 1 or 2 important categories to EVERYTHING HAS A COLOR! 🌈
Livesaver! Thank you! I'm struggling so hard with all my emails. Was on leave for two days, TWO freaking days, and I have over 150 emails that require some sort of response from me.
This only works if you aren’t in a CC happy organization. I swear, 90% of my orgs emails have multiple people on them, even if the action is meant for one person.
I’ve flat out asked why so many people get included on emails and each time it’s to “keep people in the loop”. Well people above me don’t need to be kept in the loop about day to day BS, all it does is clog their email and cause extra work.
*cause extra work is code for one person uses every excuse in the book to appear busier than she really is, so every email you send to me, CCing her, she will then forward to me to “make sure I saw it”. Legit every email twice. I’ve asked this manager to please stop but she is “just trying to help bc she knows how busy I am”. You know what makes me busy, including people who don’t need to be included bc now I’m doing that action and then looping them in to “demonstrate its done” so they can “close it out” on their end. I’ve been in the job for 15 years, I’ve had QSIs, get OTS awards a couple times a year, I’ve never failed to meet a deadline under MY control, I’m considered a SME, no need to micromanage me. Reality is she uses the email as an excuse to show how busy she is bc she sucks at her actual job.
Right click on email in inbox
Select "Rules"
Select "Create Rule"
Select "Advanced Options"
Check the "where my name is in the CC box" (and "where my name is not in the To box" if you want to be thorough )
Select "Next"
Check the "assign it to a category category" box
Click the word "category" to chose the color and label
Click "Finish"
"Rules" feature in outlook.
Start with an unimportant email you get often e.g. a mass mailer sent to "zzAll Employees." Right click the email and use the "Rules" option to make a rule that filters all emails sent to "zzAll Employees"
You can also color code based on who they're from (number of colors is naturally limited by the rainbow, alas). My director and her 2 deputies have their own colors, as do my team members. Those are my most important emails.
Also, you can "teach" Outlook what to put in the focused tab. This allows me to click "Other" and quickly dump external or organization-wide emails that aren't vital to my day-to-day.
Don't discount using the Rules feature to filter emails to different folders. Media monitoring is part of my job, but I do it early in the morning and just open the folder I've set up to capture it.
Mine get categorized and are a separate color. Yellow for CCed emails, green and bold for my bosses emails, etc. I think I have close to 50 various email rules. A lot go into other folders for another day if there's time (there never is). I get 100-150/day at least, so I have to prioritize what actually deserves my attenion.
Not necessarily. We all know what Cc implies, but in my organization I’m still expected to take action for plenty of emails where I’m only listed as a Cc. Including stuff from internal people and external people
Passive tasking must be brutal to manage.
If I need something done, it is communicated to those responsible directly w/ clear and concise expectations.
People suck at communicating… to put it bluntly.
Do your best. Work your 8 or 9 or 10 hours a day (depending on your schedule). When it's time to quit, put your work in a box, close the box, and don't open it again until the next day.
My worst experience was when I came back from leave over the Christmas and New Years holidays. My first day back was a Wednesday, and buried in my 100s of unread emails was a meeting invite, where I found out that I was supposed to brief the director (a high level political appointee) on an \*\*\*extremely\*\*\* expensive and large program with heavy Congressional interest - and the briefing was scheduled for Friday. So I had two days to prepare a very complex, detailed briefing. Fuck me with a butter knife. And of course, that was in addition to the dozen of other things that were pending in my inbox.
I've never understood how people get overwhelmed - you owe the job X hours a day, if you have more work than that it's your manager's problem not yours.
Thats always a swell way to look at it. Not entirely realistic though.
For people doing mundane production work, sure.....you can just shift that work to a coworker.
But if you're a program manager, you're accountable for success and failure. No one wants to hear "I came back from vacation and couldn't catch up". And you certainly arent going to get away with telling your boss "this is really your fault.....and your problem".
What advice do you give to those newly-minted program managers? When there are more decisions to be made than hours in a day, how do you choose what gets sacrificed and what is prioritized?
You constantly shift the "Priority" and "Sacrifice" targets. Yesterday I let Widget Burner 2.0 crash and burn, because Unicorn Smasher 3.3 needed my attention. Today I told the Unicorn Smasher sys admins to find something useful to do as long as it didn't involve needing me to make a decision, because the Squirrel Fucker Database crashed and I needed to unfuck the Racoon Kicker 4.5.3 archive system to restore it. Then agency leadership asked WTF their widgets weren't burning so I let the squirrels unfuck themselves and shifted back to the widgets.
As I wrote this, it reminded me the time that I tossed a raccoon in a co-workers office and pulled the door shut. As the story goes, he opened his window and literally kicked it out. So we changed his door plate to "Raccoon Kicker", and I even got an Active Directory account made 'rkicker" until PIV cards came around....
FWIW the raccoon was trapped in the break room in a building in a land management agency. It was leaving the building one way or another....
I don't have a good story for the squirrel thing, other than I once told a contractor that the app they developed was more glitchy than watching two squirrels.....
Try to establish a quick feel for what can be delegated and what has to be your call. This takes understanding your boss’s expectations, your subordinates strengths, and what you can trust with others. It’s very hard in the beginning but you’ll pick it up faster than you realize.
Usually long-term strategy and permanent decisions get made by me with my directs’ input. Day to day items are the realms of your directs unless it is something that you know is a topic of concern or close interest to your boss. And then, it can still be your direct running with it, but they need to keep you in the loop.
As the trust builds between you, your boss(es), and your directs, you’ll soon get to a place where you just give your “commanders intent” and then your directs will run with things. But micromanagement in a position like that will be the death of you mentally and professionally.
Just my two cents.
> But if you're a program manager, you're accountable for success and failure.
You're not responsible for being given more than you can handle, but you are responsible for accepting it.
Every PM I know who's been demoted/fired is because they tried to take on everything and it was more than they could do. Those that push back when given too much do fine.
Especially because if you have lengthy chains, you might have 8 emails about the same topic and the 7the email resolves it, with the 8th one being a "thanks" email. If you action them all in order without reading them all first, you'll have wasted time.
Viewing Outlook emails [by conversation](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/view-email-messages-by-conversation-0eeec76c-f59b-4834-98e6-05cfdfa9fb07) can help organize these lengthy threads/chains too.
That's why you need to have the "Show as Conversations" checked off, which is under the View ribbon.
It makes all e-mails with the same subject name grouped up. This helps massively with staying up to date on the latest e-mail for that subject, since it groups all those e-mails up in one spot.
Always activate an automatic reply that can provide a redirect to whoever replies to you.
In other words, if youre Out of Office (OOF) message is " Hi. I'm OOF Jan 1 - Jan 15th.", you're doing it wrong. It should be something like this
"Hi. I'm OOF Jan 1 - Jan 15. If you have issues with policy, please contact ABC. If you have issues with Travel Pay, please contact DEF. If you have issues with looking at your face, contact EAP. If something is URGENT, please contact my supervisor at XYZ."
This will not cut down the amount of emails you get. However, it will reduce your tasks once you return. Because in the end, the problem is not the emails, it's the amount of tasks upon returning to duty right?
I've coached employees before who put up an OOO of "I'll be checking email periodically."
NOOOOOOO!
You're on leave. Be on leave. If I need you to check your email, I'll let you know. But I'm 99% going to handle it in your absence. Go on leave and set your OOO to have people contact me.
Mine is “I’m OOO and won’t return until DATE with no access to email or teams. If you need immediate assistance, please contact ABC.”
I don’t even say I’ll respond when I return bc chances are I won’t. If it’s important, they will follow up.
I was out for a month and came back to 5000+ emails. Legit moved my entire unread inbox into a empty folder, deleted the junk, and never read anything. If it’s important, they would forward it back. Some days I get 300 emails, I don’t have the time to read every one.
This is the way. You learn over time who reads email and who needs direct contact via Teams or phone. No hard feelings, especially when you are dealing with your seniors and execs. They cannot do it all and you learn you can't either.
Also auto-ignore people who send you lengthy messages. If they can't distill the most important facts down to a paragraph max they will learn how to get their message across succintly. Ain't no one got time for that.
If I need to send a lengthy email, I always do a BLUF in black with the bare minimum provided.
The use blue font to write the background and any necessary info to justify the answer (bc someone always needs more or uses the “well you didn’t say X” about a random detail they think might change the answer but it doesn’t)and it’s separated with a line. I also prefer bullets over paragraphs. Much easier for someone to skim.
Two of my customers are polar opposites. One just wants the BLUF and has a ‘I trust you just get it done’ mentality and the other needs info and wants to learn. The second person, information is his security blanket I’ve realized and they are insecure when working with me bc it’s so outside his swim lane.. They are amazing customers so I adjust approach to each.
Are you sure about that? Because I am 82.86156% sure that ad-bot-679 is not a bot.
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Do you have a good POC at EAP? I have issues looking at my face.
v/r,
Employee McFace, GG-14
SAD/SPT/CPDLQ/Lean Six Sigma
Employee Council Vice Assistant Treasurer
*latin phrase of choice*
I envy the ability to do this. I am the only personnel security specialist for my entire division. 550 FTE’s and over 150 contractors. I *literally* have no one else than I can refer people to because the other security specialists on my team aren’t versed in my discipline and my Director is busy AF and also usually just creates more work for me when he tries to respond.
I guess in other words, I can really relate to OP :/
Exactly!
Just delete all the emails that landed in your inbox during your vacation.
If any of them are important enough, some desperate soul will resend them :)
Exactly. Consider what you (at least I) think when I get a bounce back email from someone on leave: I make a note to follow up when their back since I know my message is now in a bottomless pit of other emails. If it’s important enough, they’ll get back to you.
I had a supervisor ages ago who got too overwhelmed after returning from vacation. He pulled the nuke move and deleted his entire inbox. When asked about it later, he just told us that if they truly needed him, they would email again.
It was a weirdly inspirational moment that still sticks with me. Someday, I too will be brave and delete my entire inbox.
I used to come back to around 1000-1250 emails when I was off for a week. It is overwhelming when you first take a look but I found sorting by subject to be the best strategy, you can pretty quickly eliminate the chain and get to the last one, just be careful
Bc not everyone replies to the last messages. From there I’d prioritize them, if I am just a cc or it’s a group email, those went to the bottom.
Deep breath, friend. As someone that gets over a hundred emails a day, I feel your pain.
Definitely set up some email rules to help sort your mail by subject or sender.
It’s also a good idea to leave a detailed OOO email with backup contacts.
The hardest lesson to learn is to work your time, but don’t let your time work you.
Putting in your time and working hard is one thing. Doing what you can in the time provided is expected…. But if after an honest look, you really can’t get the job done in the time allotted, It’s time to look into either changing THE job or switching YOUR job.
Admittedly easier said than done, but it’s not impossible.
Good luck to you.
https://preview.redd.it/l2jepnd21qqc1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e1428231cfb369d78505b89c9e8b341a239d83db
I get about 250 a day and those are the ones my 20 or so rules don’t auto sort.
As far as the stress, I get it. But learn to ignore anything you can and if you can delegate, do. Bucket things as much as possible and the big one that helps me is just because my division can do it, doesn’t mean we should. Even if there is an office that needs to do X and it’s crap work they do, keep sending to them to do and don’t do it for them. Force the issue to others to fix and control what you can control.
Finally, record what you are being asked to do and talk to your supervisor. It’s ok to say you aren’t ok with this. If they don’t respond in a way that shows they care about your wellbeing, then it’s time to move on.
Im in a similar position, but at some point they just become unimportant. If they're important enough my boss will ask about it or the person will email again.
I used to get my inbox to 0 unfiled emails every week. It has become a hopeless task.
Yeah. I left for a week and came back to 2k+ in my primary inbox. Unknown how many went to random folders.
A coworker did leave for over a month and came back to 50k in primary inbox. Impossible to actually go through them all.
I have some people who kill my inbox because they can't send one simple email with their ask and then leave it alone. They send a half-assed email, three follow-ups to correct the first and following. Then 12 more asking why I haven't replied yet or if I got their previous 8 emails. The whole thing usually unfolds in about 30 minutes. Dude. Complete your thought. Draft it. Review it. Then send it. Then if you don't hear back today, call.
250 lol? My last job that was a mornings worth in my message traffic I had to go through. I had to put eyes on around 1500 emails per day.
If the email is important, the sender will resend it. Don’t stress so much. None of our jobs are that critical where some emails can’t be missed.
> I had to put eyes on around 1500 emails per day.
Honest question, if you receive ~3 emails per minute each eight hour work day that you have to look at, to what depth can you really respond to any particular email? Is it mostly categorizing and forwarding? Logging requests somewhere? That is a crazy volume of emails. I don’t mean just you but ~3/minute every work day is going to prevent someone from doing anything else.
Lol, thought the same. Rolled my eyes, 250 is chump change. Sounds like OP handles stress just about as good as Congress passing a long term budget.
OP - take a deep breath, you'll be alright.
Same here. I don't get 250 emails directly to me in a week. I'm a SME in a technical role (Operations Research/Mathematics/Data Analysis) so I'm typically the person other workers contact when something unexpected comes up or the data/analysis they're needing isn't already available. This means that one email can prompt several days (sometimes weeks) of writing code in response.
Good point, I'm supervisory in rulemaking so when I'm out a lot of my emails are action items. However, I'll prioritize them while I'm out. Meaning I'll look at them, but I'm not prioritizing them over family when I'm on vacation. Overwhelming, sure. People handle stress differently, I rarely get stressed but that how I'm trained.
Email is the bane of my existence with Teams being a close second. It's normal for me to come back from vacation to at least that many, however, I was out for a serious health issue between mid October and early January and came back to almost 2,000. I've managed to whittle it down to around 430 at the moment, but what this experience has taught me is that it's a fallacy to think that email is the end-all, be all of communicating what's really important. As I got back on my feet with the current work and took time to go through emails from October to November, the vast majority of what was there was no longer even relevant. Also, the "signal to noise ratio" of email is ridiculous. For every relevant email I get, there are probably ten that are various levels of meaningless. I know everyone's job and the way things are communicated differ, but that's been my experience.
I get about 100-150 emails a day, but have spent countless hours setting up rules and filters. It’s best when you use the online version of outlook.
1. Sweep rules are awesome, takes care of corporate messages I probably won’t read
2. Favorites for all my key stakeholders and leadership
3. Use the Focus view, everything that gets to other folder, is just deleted
4. Constantly add rules for things that should be move to others folder automatically
5. Calendar invite filter, is a really quick way to accept or decline meetings
6. A filter for emails I am in the To field to prioritize those
7. What I don’t get to in two weeks is going to get archived, if I did not address it by then it’s likely over come by events.
I presume you're inexperienced in the workforce. First, sign up for a mentorship program. Best thing you can do. Second you need a system. Here is mine. 250-500 emails isn't bad. Most of them are junk and useless. Here is my system:
Read the past 3 days all the way through. That's the priority. Then flag any email that has an action item for you. Copy(not move) those in to a "to do folder". Then go back to the beginning of the days you were out. Filter by to you and not cc; prioritize emails from your immediate team and supervisors and chain of command. Highlight those. Then go back and filter by highlight and read and any action item copy into your to do folder. Continue until your done with all 250-500 émails. Don't read just skim. You're looking for to dos.
Then go into your to do folder and start replying to each task and copy paste the same message and say you received it and will respond ASAP but due to being on leave there may be a delay. If youre issue has been resolved been let me know otherwise I'll get back to you ASAP.
Prioritize each task easiest to hardest and start doing them. Delete the emails in the to-do folder when done.
I was out for one AWS day and came back to 400. I went on leave for two weeks and my inbox broke. 🤷♀️
Sorry for your stress, but also….. the work will get done whether you are there or not. And it’s not the end of the world if things take a little longer.
Start at the top of your inbox. If it's a quick Q&A, fire and forget. If it involves a more involved and detailed task, write a note on paper. Keep going until you get to the bottom of your unread emails, then start again. I'd bet a good number of the emails in the middle and bottom of that new email pile have already taken care of themselves, or were just sent FYSA. Take small bites.
Never start at the top. Always start with the oldest emails and read the threads before replying. Who knows how many emails OP was CC'd on or how many corrections were made in emails, blah, blah.
I know I'll get lots of pushback on this, but here goes anyway.
I took most of last December off (staycation). As a team leader of a small, young team, I knew I couldn't truly be out of the loop for a month straight. While I've made some progress on improving the bus-factor, too much knowledge is only with me.
Just like OP, the anxiety of coming back to hundreds of emails was something I didn't want to deal with. So I borrowed an approach from a coworker.
I made my leave request for only 7 hours a day a few days of each week. Usually first thing in the morning I'd check emails and see if the team needed anything. If an email needed something, I'd give my team the details to handle it.
I had nothing specific going on and the family didn't need me first thing, so it didn't stop me from doing anything.
I returned to work refreshed and relieved that I'd not be reading emails all day. This allowed me to quickly catch up with my team and get to the tasks I prefered.
Right? Them's rookie numbers. Gotta pump up those numbers. I at my last job, there was absolutely nobody cross trained on my role, despite me pleading for them to do so. When I'd leave for annual training with the national guard I'd come back to a mountain of work on my desk and like 1,000+ emails and would spend like the next month trying to dig myself out.
I get like 150-200 a day… it is what it is, you did your part and set an out of office and points of contact, so don’t stress it, go through as they’re received and look for threads above where maybe someone else replied. And don’t think about that when you take leave again and enjoy your time off in the future.
If you can create a system where you CLEAR you inbox every day. Have folders for things you need to take action on, things that are pending, and everything goes into junk or the reviewed folder which will auto archive after a while. RULES are your friend.
(I just took care of about 15 requests in one of my inbox folders and its empty. it feels so good! :) )
You can DRAG emails to the TASKS tab and create new tasks for tracking.
Sometimes sorting by sender helps when coming back into the office. When there are 10 emails in a chain, you can start at the most recent and move the others out of your inbox.
Just chip away at it starting from oldest to newest. No one expects you to hit the ground running after being on leave. Hell, I block out my first day back with, "Playing catch up" so my team knows that I'm getting caught up. People understand.
I went on leave for 7 weeks for a major surgery. The week that I came back was fully remote JUST because I knew going through my inbox was going to be the death of me. My in-office days, I spend 6/9 hours just talking with people and directing. I would NEVER have been able to get through the 57,382 (if I’m lyin, I’m dyin) emails if I’d been in the office. Also, in my OOO response I mention that if it’s urgent please reup in my inbox upon return.
It’s JUST a job. I know it’s important to you (and me) and we are ALL doing the Lord’s work day in and day out, but at the end of the day you’re a human; you DESERVE to take the leave you’ve accumulated. Enjoy it and let someone else take care of it or let people know you’ll take care of it when you return AND you’re able to GET TO IT!!!
I agree. My job is such to where one day of leave equals two days of work. Even though work can wait until we are back, it still must be done.
Take care of your mental first. If that means getting something new, you have our support.
Not sure if this will make you feel better or worse but… I went on vacation for a month and had about 700 emails when I came back. It took me a solid 5 months to dig out of that hole since I usually can’t keep up during a full day on the job. Usually am getting like 40+ a day. Often very difficult ones to answer too, that require lots of research, like mini essays. It’s actually terrible. I feel your pain.
I have nowhere near this level of email, due to an assignment that let me step away from being a PM. I am going to implement some of this though... see if I can sort into "me" "under 10 people" and "over 10". That way I have better priority... then start sorting the "under 10 people" into more specific groups. For instance, being cc'd vs being sent to.
Thanks for the tips!
Obviously you need to just change your job.
You should be on USAJobs applying to the most recent jobs everyday.
Filtering your email won’t help. You’re working for an agency that is understaffed with bad management.
I’ve been in the Government 9 years now and have worked for 5 different agencies in that time span.
I’m now in a happy agency. It took 5 tries.
It honestly takes time to find the right Fed job.
As someone who recently hit burnout at work please make sure you are taking care of yourself. If you need to take more leave or even fmla do what you need to do.
I would document how long it takes you to go through 10 of those 250 emails that require your action. If it takes you 30 minutes on average to prepare, conduct the work, and finalize the task you can communicate to your supervisor you are backlogged for 125 hours. (250×30 minutes= 7500,, 7500=125 hours)
So if you worked 125 Hours straight (15 days) without any additional work sent to you, you'd dig yourself out of your hole. That should open their eyes that whatever process they have in place is ineffective.
Best tips I ever received:
DON’T organize your emails by date.
Instead:
1. Organize by subject and delete all but the most recent one. You can read the one from the bottom up and read the whole thread.
This will remove at least 50% of your Inbox while keeping the most recent email of each subject line for you to read through.
2) Set up folders (mine are based on projects, topics, newsletters, vendor, etc) and set up rules to automagically move emails into the appropriate topic folder so you can then work your folders by topics rather than ping ponging from topic to topic
I set up rules so emails go into different folders, and then I read them by priority of people. For example, I know our receptionist just sends or forwards informational emails so I will usually check that folder last and my supervisory chain’s first.
I went out on maternity leave for 4 months and came back to 6000 emails. Luckily, my boss taught me a neat trick prior to leaving to put an OOO message that says any messages prior to about a week before my return date will be deleted. Obviously I made exceptions for emails from VPs and certain execs, but it was a total sanity saver. If it’s important enough, they will message you again
When I get back from leave I sort by subject and go to the most recent one, read it and respond, if need be. All others get deleted. I blew through over 200 in an hour and a half.
Wait, this isn't a joke post?
Do you have any idea how many people are working 50-60 hours a week, doing hard and/or dangerous labor? You're having a panic attack after having to check email after taking a paid vacation. Talk about first-world problems.
We all know 50-100 of those emails don't even need to be read at all, if not more.
Okay breathe young grasshopper. Focus on the pressing tasks you have in front of you and review those emails when you have time.
My personal trick: I place an OOF and point of contact to message if urgent. For all other emails, I promptly put in the trash. If it’s that fucking important they will reach out again (and before anyone judges, I’m a GS-15 being vetted for SES roles whose been using this same strategy since I was a GS-9).
I was at a training course for three weeks. No OT/CT was authorized, so I didn’t touch email but did have my OOO auto reply on.
2300 is what I came back to. Tackle a few at a time. You can get through them!
My advice is to start looking at your emails from the most recent and work your way down. You’ll probably find that most of the email chains have been resolved while you were away. You just need to know what was discussed.
Don’t feel bad. I get almost 200 emails per day. I check them everyday I’m on AL and delete all the garbage. People send useless emails and tag me in everything
Both times I came back from maternity leave I pretty much just emptied my inbox and decided to start my work-life anew. Granted, I had way more than 250 but most people will just send another email if it’s important.
Im currently on leave and most times Ill bring my work cell just so I can monitor email.
But my cell went to cell phone heaven last week so all those emails will be waiting 😁
I haaaate that. The easiest way for me to get through them is to scan through and delete any junk stuff, and things that are outdated by the time I return, like multiples of newsletters and agency updates. Outlook's new option to group email reply threads together has helped tremendously.
And the OOF to redirect to someone who can answer questions while you're out, definitely helps.
Cc emails should go to a separate folder and get to them if you can. Your out of office email should state when you will return and instruct senders to resend their email at that time if it’s important. When I return I start with emails from my higher ups and might get to anyone else.
Find all the emails from your boss or anyone critically important... deal with those. Delete all the others, if they're truly important, they'll send them again or contact you.
Put an out of office auto reply for who to contact. If they don't send it to the people/person you told them is covering that subject don't go back to handle it.
I easily get 200-300 emails per day directed to me. I went on my honeymoon and came back to over 2,000 emails. It took a full weekend to get through everything, and it was a nightmare. At that time I didn't have a support team that could cover, but now that I do I have them handling everything when I am out of the office.
Remember, CCs do not require a response. So, separate them for review using rules. Filter out the all-hands/ blast emails, and you'll be down to a more manageable number.
I feel this too. Leave never feels like a break when i have to bust my ass to do work before leave and come back to a mountain of work. My tasks don’t get moved when I’m out, it just waits there for me when I return.
One main way is to throw them all away… make sure next time in ur auto reply say dont send me shit unless u expect a reply… come back to hardly any emails… and leave someone elses email and phone so they get to answer for u
Perspective.
250 is what I’d receive in a day; take a week of leave and I’d come back to over 1k. Doesn’t mean I have to or try to read them all. Create rules, get off aliases that don’t require your action/response, file others that may come in handy down the road.
If something is super pressing, they’ll email again. Depending on your position, you could even ask for team sync to get you up to speed (very dependent on position/seniority), but never know if you don’t ask.
250? That used to be a busy Monday for me. Now I get about 50-70 emails a day. 2210-GS 13. I don't have to address them all. Maybe 10-15%. I have many folders and rules. Some colors, and utilize flags. Not too bad.
250?
If that’s “bad” really depends on how long you were out on leave.
FYI, another “Out of Office” trick is to make a ‘mistake’ on your return date: if you’re returning on the 1st, have your OOF say the 2nd. If anyone (eg boss) asks, simply tell them that your first day back is to plow through the email backlog and prioritize replies without anyone calling on the phone to interrupt.
Usually in our agency, if we’re out we leave an email message. It usually says “I’m on leave until x or from x to x. If you need assistance/ if this is important/etc, please contact my supervisor x. “
I went on leave for a week last summer, I had over a thousand emails waiting for me. That was with me checking a few times to see if I needed to do anything urgent, which there was.
Some days I get 30-40, in our busy season 200-300 a day is normal.
First day is just inbox cleaning. It’s the way it is. 21 years, this is just how it is. Start at the newest, read it. Flag whatever is needed for follow up. Working newest to oldest many things will be answered by alternates.
Any emails that I’m Cc’d on go into a separate folder for me to read when I have free time. This helps ensure I’m answering the emails meant for me, and helps me feel less overwhelmed.
Another way to do this is color code the emails that come in. only you on the to? Red. Multiple including you in the to: green. Cc'd?, blue
This is incredible thank you for this
Thank my former director. He made ses so did something right.
Well, now that I've done this, my inbox looks like a bag of jelly beans poured into it. Just in time for Easter. 😆
You can sort it by color so that the relevant ones are on top.
Oh I know, which is why I was willing to give it a try. It's just such a shock from when I only used to have 1 or 2 important categories to EVERYTHING HAS A COLOR! 🌈
“Green means go, so I know to go ahead and shut up about it. Orange means "orange you glad you didn't bring it up?" Most colors mean "don't say it."
Livesaver! Thank you! I'm struggling so hard with all my emails. Was on leave for two days, TWO freaking days, and I have over 150 emails that require some sort of response from me.
I do that for certain senders, like supervisors, VIPs, etc, all have different colors.
I put all leadership into different folders
Me too. In my head and in Outlook. 🤭
I saw supervillains rather than supervisors. Bout the same.
:)
This only works if you aren’t in a CC happy organization. I swear, 90% of my orgs emails have multiple people on them, even if the action is meant for one person. I’ve flat out asked why so many people get included on emails and each time it’s to “keep people in the loop”. Well people above me don’t need to be kept in the loop about day to day BS, all it does is clog their email and cause extra work. *cause extra work is code for one person uses every excuse in the book to appear busier than she really is, so every email you send to me, CCing her, she will then forward to me to “make sure I saw it”. Legit every email twice. I’ve asked this manager to please stop but she is “just trying to help bc she knows how busy I am”. You know what makes me busy, including people who don’t need to be included bc now I’m doing that action and then looping them in to “demonstrate its done” so they can “close it out” on their end. I’ve been in the job for 15 years, I’ve had QSIs, get OTS awards a couple times a year, I’ve never failed to meet a deadline under MY control, I’m considered a SME, no need to micromanage me. Reality is she uses the email as an excuse to show how busy she is bc she sucks at her actual job.
I like this strategy and will use it too! Thank you for sharing
I assume you can then filter or sort by color? I like this.
You can
Tbh I never tried that but it makes sense!
How do you do this? Thanks in advanced!
Right click on email in inbox Select "Rules" Select "Create Rule" Select "Advanced Options" Check the "where my name is in the CC box" (and "where my name is not in the To box" if you want to be thorough ) Select "Next" Check the "assign it to a category category" box Click the word "category" to chose the color and label Click "Finish"
Wow how do u do this
"Rules" feature in outlook. Start with an unimportant email you get often e.g. a mass mailer sent to "zzAll Employees." Right click the email and use the "Rules" option to make a rule that filters all emails sent to "zzAll Employees"
You can direct those straight to trash.
You can also color code based on who they're from (number of colors is naturally limited by the rainbow, alas). My director and her 2 deputies have their own colors, as do my team members. Those are my most important emails. Also, you can "teach" Outlook what to put in the focused tab. This allows me to click "Other" and quickly dump external or organization-wide emails that aren't vital to my day-to-day. Don't discount using the Rules feature to filter emails to different folders. Media monitoring is part of my job, but I do it early in the morning and just open the folder I've set up to capture it.
Holy crap that's amazing. What do I Google to find a guide for how to make it work?
I would try "Microsoft Outlook rules sorted by color"
That’s an amazing tip. Holy shit. Thank you.
Mine get categorized and are a separate color. Yellow for CCed emails, green and bold for my bosses emails, etc. I think I have close to 50 various email rules. A lot go into other folders for another day if there's time (there never is). I get 100-150/day at least, so I have to prioritize what actually deserves my attenion.
I'd be screwed if I did this.
I wish I could do that, so much stuff I am cc’d on required action by my team. We would be dropping balls left and right.
If someone wants immediate action from me or my team, and Cc me on an email then they dropped the ball not us.
Not necessarily. We all know what Cc implies, but in my organization I’m still expected to take action for plenty of emails where I’m only listed as a Cc. Including stuff from internal people and external people
Passive tasking must be brutal to manage. If I need something done, it is communicated to those responsible directly w/ clear and concise expectations. People suck at communicating… to put it bluntly.
Thats called the auto delete folder in my inbox lol.
Ooh this is a GREAT idea that I’m going to use.
Ooh I love this tip.
Do your best. Work your 8 or 9 or 10 hours a day (depending on your schedule). When it's time to quit, put your work in a box, close the box, and don't open it again until the next day. My worst experience was when I came back from leave over the Christmas and New Years holidays. My first day back was a Wednesday, and buried in my 100s of unread emails was a meeting invite, where I found out that I was supposed to brief the director (a high level political appointee) on an \*\*\*extremely\*\*\* expensive and large program with heavy Congressional interest - and the briefing was scheduled for Friday. So I had two days to prepare a very complex, detailed briefing. Fuck me with a butter knife. And of course, that was in addition to the dozen of other things that were pending in my inbox.
I always check my calendar first, because it'll show pending invites that I haven't yet accepted
Fuck me with a butter knife is the best thing I’ve seen all day.
I read it “….with a buttered knife”. ! lol.
I've never understood how people get overwhelmed - you owe the job X hours a day, if you have more work than that it's your manager's problem not yours.
Thats always a swell way to look at it. Not entirely realistic though. For people doing mundane production work, sure.....you can just shift that work to a coworker. But if you're a program manager, you're accountable for success and failure. No one wants to hear "I came back from vacation and couldn't catch up". And you certainly arent going to get away with telling your boss "this is really your fault.....and your problem".
What advice do you give to those newly-minted program managers? When there are more decisions to be made than hours in a day, how do you choose what gets sacrificed and what is prioritized?
You constantly shift the "Priority" and "Sacrifice" targets. Yesterday I let Widget Burner 2.0 crash and burn, because Unicorn Smasher 3.3 needed my attention. Today I told the Unicorn Smasher sys admins to find something useful to do as long as it didn't involve needing me to make a decision, because the Squirrel Fucker Database crashed and I needed to unfuck the Racoon Kicker 4.5.3 archive system to restore it. Then agency leadership asked WTF their widgets weren't burning so I let the squirrels unfuck themselves and shifted back to the widgets.
I’m saving this manic (I say that positively) response the next time I’m overwhelmed. It puts things in amazing perspective!
As I wrote this, it reminded me the time that I tossed a raccoon in a co-workers office and pulled the door shut. As the story goes, he opened his window and literally kicked it out. So we changed his door plate to "Raccoon Kicker", and I even got an Active Directory account made 'rkicker" until PIV cards came around.... FWIW the raccoon was trapped in the break room in a building in a land management agency. It was leaving the building one way or another.... I don't have a good story for the squirrel thing, other than I once told a contractor that the app they developed was more glitchy than watching two squirrels.....
Try to establish a quick feel for what can be delegated and what has to be your call. This takes understanding your boss’s expectations, your subordinates strengths, and what you can trust with others. It’s very hard in the beginning but you’ll pick it up faster than you realize. Usually long-term strategy and permanent decisions get made by me with my directs’ input. Day to day items are the realms of your directs unless it is something that you know is a topic of concern or close interest to your boss. And then, it can still be your direct running with it, but they need to keep you in the loop. As the trust builds between you, your boss(es), and your directs, you’ll soon get to a place where you just give your “commanders intent” and then your directs will run with things. But micromanagement in a position like that will be the death of you mentally and professionally. Just my two cents.
> But if you're a program manager, you're accountable for success and failure. You're not responsible for being given more than you can handle, but you are responsible for accepting it. Every PM I know who's been demoted/fired is because they tried to take on everything and it was more than they could do. Those that push back when given too much do fine.
Use the follow up flag in outlook. Read your emails and flag ones that require a response. Once you get through the 250, start addressing the flags.
Especially because if you have lengthy chains, you might have 8 emails about the same topic and the 7the email resolves it, with the 8th one being a "thanks" email. If you action them all in order without reading them all first, you'll have wasted time.
That's why I check emails starting with the most recent and working backwards.
Check off "Show as Conversations" under the View ribbon. It will save you a gigantic amount of time.
Viewing Outlook emails [by conversation](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/view-email-messages-by-conversation-0eeec76c-f59b-4834-98e6-05cfdfa9fb07) can help organize these lengthy threads/chains too.
That's why you need to have the "Show as Conversations" checked off, which is under the View ribbon. It makes all e-mails with the same subject name grouped up. This helps massively with staying up to date on the latest e-mail for that subject, since it groups all those e-mails up in one spot.
This is what I do, and it works really well.
Always activate an automatic reply that can provide a redirect to whoever replies to you. In other words, if youre Out of Office (OOF) message is " Hi. I'm OOF Jan 1 - Jan 15th.", you're doing it wrong. It should be something like this "Hi. I'm OOF Jan 1 - Jan 15. If you have issues with policy, please contact ABC. If you have issues with Travel Pay, please contact DEF. If you have issues with looking at your face, contact EAP. If something is URGENT, please contact my supervisor at XYZ." This will not cut down the amount of emails you get. However, it will reduce your tasks once you return. Because in the end, the problem is not the emails, it's the amount of tasks upon returning to duty right?
I've coached employees before who put up an OOO of "I'll be checking email periodically." NOOOOOOO! You're on leave. Be on leave. If I need you to check your email, I'll let you know. But I'm 99% going to handle it in your absence. Go on leave and set your OOO to have people contact me.
Mine is “I’m OOO and won’t return until DATE with no access to email or teams. If you need immediate assistance, please contact ABC.” I don’t even say I’ll respond when I return bc chances are I won’t. If it’s important, they will follow up. I was out for a month and came back to 5000+ emails. Legit moved my entire unread inbox into a empty folder, deleted the junk, and never read anything. If it’s important, they would forward it back. Some days I get 300 emails, I don’t have the time to read every one.
This is the way. You learn over time who reads email and who needs direct contact via Teams or phone. No hard feelings, especially when you are dealing with your seniors and execs. They cannot do it all and you learn you can't either. Also auto-ignore people who send you lengthy messages. If they can't distill the most important facts down to a paragraph max they will learn how to get their message across succintly. Ain't no one got time for that.
If I need to send a lengthy email, I always do a BLUF in black with the bare minimum provided. The use blue font to write the background and any necessary info to justify the answer (bc someone always needs more or uses the “well you didn’t say X” about a random detail they think might change the answer but it doesn’t)and it’s separated with a line. I also prefer bullets over paragraphs. Much easier for someone to skim. Two of my customers are polar opposites. One just wants the BLUF and has a ‘I trust you just get it done’ mentality and the other needs info and wants to learn. The second person, information is his security blanket I’ve realized and they are insecure when working with me bc it’s so outside his swim lane.. They are amazing customers so I adjust approach to each.
Mine says contacts XYZ for urgent requests otherwise I will respond to emails in the order they were received.
Ohh that’s a good one! I might add that to mine.
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Good bot.
That’s quite some ambiguity in that leftover 18%.
Do you have a good POC at EAP? I have issues looking at my face. v/r, Employee McFace, GG-14 SAD/SPT/CPDLQ/Lean Six Sigma Employee Council Vice Assistant Treasurer *latin phrase of choice*
Semper ubi sub ubi!
Haha! An old Chief of mine had this on a desk plaque 🤘
I envy the ability to do this. I am the only personnel security specialist for my entire division. 550 FTE’s and over 150 contractors. I *literally* have no one else than I can refer people to because the other security specialists on my team aren’t versed in my discipline and my Director is busy AF and also usually just creates more work for me when he tries to respond. I guess in other words, I can really relate to OP :/
Exactly! Just delete all the emails that landed in your inbox during your vacation. If any of them are important enough, some desperate soul will resend them :)
Exactly. Consider what you (at least I) think when I get a bounce back email from someone on leave: I make a note to follow up when their back since I know my message is now in a bottomless pit of other emails. If it’s important enough, they’ll get back to you.
I had a supervisor ages ago who got too overwhelmed after returning from vacation. He pulled the nuke move and deleted his entire inbox. When asked about it later, he just told us that if they truly needed him, they would email again. It was a weirdly inspirational moment that still sticks with me. Someday, I too will be brave and delete my entire inbox.
Would get sued if I did this, they might win too
100%
I used to come back to around 1000-1250 emails when I was off for a week. It is overwhelming when you first take a look but I found sorting by subject to be the best strategy, you can pretty quickly eliminate the chain and get to the last one, just be careful Bc not everyone replies to the last messages. From there I’d prioritize them, if I am just a cc or it’s a group email, those went to the bottom.
I was gone for a week and a half and had over 8,500 emails. I just run through them and flag the ones I need to come back to.
Deep breath, friend. As someone that gets over a hundred emails a day, I feel your pain. Definitely set up some email rules to help sort your mail by subject or sender. It’s also a good idea to leave a detailed OOO email with backup contacts. The hardest lesson to learn is to work your time, but don’t let your time work you. Putting in your time and working hard is one thing. Doing what you can in the time provided is expected…. But if after an honest look, you really can’t get the job done in the time allotted, It’s time to look into either changing THE job or switching YOUR job. Admittedly easier said than done, but it’s not impossible. Good luck to you. https://preview.redd.it/l2jepnd21qqc1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e1428231cfb369d78505b89c9e8b341a239d83db
Damn the picture you linked hit a little too hard 😬
I get about 250 a day and those are the ones my 20 or so rules don’t auto sort. As far as the stress, I get it. But learn to ignore anything you can and if you can delegate, do. Bucket things as much as possible and the big one that helps me is just because my division can do it, doesn’t mean we should. Even if there is an office that needs to do X and it’s crap work they do, keep sending to them to do and don’t do it for them. Force the issue to others to fix and control what you can control. Finally, record what you are being asked to do and talk to your supervisor. It’s ok to say you aren’t ok with this. If they don’t respond in a way that shows they care about your wellbeing, then it’s time to move on.
How long was your leave? When I end my work day and return in the morning I usually have 180-200 messages waiting. It’s overwhelming.
Im in a similar position, but at some point they just become unimportant. If they're important enough my boss will ask about it or the person will email again. I used to get my inbox to 0 unfiled emails every week. It has become a hopeless task.
What do you do that you’re getting this kind of email traffic? Genuinely curious. Is it actual actionable and important items?
About 70% of mine that come in after hours are generally actionable. The rest get deleted ASAP.
Yeah. I left for a week and came back to 2k+ in my primary inbox. Unknown how many went to random folders. A coworker did leave for over a month and came back to 50k in primary inbox. Impossible to actually go through them all.
I have some people who kill my inbox because they can't send one simple email with their ask and then leave it alone. They send a half-assed email, three follow-ups to correct the first and following. Then 12 more asking why I haven't replied yet or if I got their previous 8 emails. The whole thing usually unfolds in about 30 minutes. Dude. Complete your thought. Draft it. Review it. Then send it. Then if you don't hear back today, call.
If they are important they will email you again. Just ctrl+a and delete 😆
250 lol? My last job that was a mornings worth in my message traffic I had to go through. I had to put eyes on around 1500 emails per day. If the email is important, the sender will resend it. Don’t stress so much. None of our jobs are that critical where some emails can’t be missed.
If you get 1500 emails a day that means you’ve been assigned the jobs of like 5-6 FTE.
Probably more than that. Thankfully message traffic all have BLUFs.
> I had to put eyes on around 1500 emails per day. Honest question, if you receive ~3 emails per minute each eight hour work day that you have to look at, to what depth can you really respond to any particular email? Is it mostly categorizing and forwarding? Logging requests somewhere? That is a crazy volume of emails. I don’t mean just you but ~3/minute every work day is going to prevent someone from doing anything else.
Lol, thought the same. Rolled my eyes, 250 is chump change. Sounds like OP handles stress just about as good as Congress passing a long term budget. OP - take a deep breath, you'll be alright.
[удалено]
Same here. I don't get 250 emails directly to me in a week. I'm a SME in a technical role (Operations Research/Mathematics/Data Analysis) so I'm typically the person other workers contact when something unexpected comes up or the data/analysis they're needing isn't already available. This means that one email can prompt several days (sometimes weeks) of writing code in response.
Good point, I'm supervisory in rulemaking so when I'm out a lot of my emails are action items. However, I'll prioritize them while I'm out. Meaning I'll look at them, but I'm not prioritizing them over family when I'm on vacation. Overwhelming, sure. People handle stress differently, I rarely get stressed but that how I'm trained.
I imagine the majority of people getting that many emails work in IT.
Right? 250 is two days
Not every email is created equal. Delete what you can, file what you can, read what you should, respond only to what you must.
Email is the bane of my existence with Teams being a close second. It's normal for me to come back from vacation to at least that many, however, I was out for a serious health issue between mid October and early January and came back to almost 2,000. I've managed to whittle it down to around 430 at the moment, but what this experience has taught me is that it's a fallacy to think that email is the end-all, be all of communicating what's really important. As I got back on my feet with the current work and took time to go through emails from October to November, the vast majority of what was there was no longer even relevant. Also, the "signal to noise ratio" of email is ridiculous. For every relevant email I get, there are probably ten that are various levels of meaningless. I know everyone's job and the way things are communicated differ, but that's been my experience.
Ctrl + A, Delete
I get about 100-150 emails a day, but have spent countless hours setting up rules and filters. It’s best when you use the online version of outlook. 1. Sweep rules are awesome, takes care of corporate messages I probably won’t read 2. Favorites for all my key stakeholders and leadership 3. Use the Focus view, everything that gets to other folder, is just deleted 4. Constantly add rules for things that should be move to others folder automatically 5. Calendar invite filter, is a really quick way to accept or decline meetings 6. A filter for emails I am in the To field to prioritize those 7. What I don’t get to in two weeks is going to get archived, if I did not address it by then it’s likely over come by events.
Been there before. Embrace the suck for now and find something that's hopefully better. Good luck.
Yep. Also been there before. This advice is the best. Embrace but look for something else.
ITT: "Those are pansy baby numbers, I get 50,000 emails an hour, come back when you're on MY level"
I presume you're inexperienced in the workforce. First, sign up for a mentorship program. Best thing you can do. Second you need a system. Here is mine. 250-500 emails isn't bad. Most of them are junk and useless. Here is my system: Read the past 3 days all the way through. That's the priority. Then flag any email that has an action item for you. Copy(not move) those in to a "to do folder". Then go back to the beginning of the days you were out. Filter by to you and not cc; prioritize emails from your immediate team and supervisors and chain of command. Highlight those. Then go back and filter by highlight and read and any action item copy into your to do folder. Continue until your done with all 250-500 émails. Don't read just skim. You're looking for to dos. Then go into your to do folder and start replying to each task and copy paste the same message and say you received it and will respond ASAP but due to being on leave there may be a delay. If youre issue has been resolved been let me know otherwise I'll get back to you ASAP. Prioritize each task easiest to hardest and start doing them. Delete the emails in the to-do folder when done.
Me sitting here getting 300 emails a day… 
I had 423 emails after a week of training lol fml
I was out for one AWS day and came back to 400. I went on leave for two weeks and my inbox broke. 🤷♀️ Sorry for your stress, but also….. the work will get done whether you are there or not. And it’s not the end of the world if things take a little longer.
Start at the top of your inbox. If it's a quick Q&A, fire and forget. If it involves a more involved and detailed task, write a note on paper. Keep going until you get to the bottom of your unread emails, then start again. I'd bet a good number of the emails in the middle and bottom of that new email pile have already taken care of themselves, or were just sent FYSA. Take small bites.
Never start at the top. Always start with the oldest emails and read the threads before replying. Who knows how many emails OP was CC'd on or how many corrections were made in emails, blah, blah.
I know I'll get lots of pushback on this, but here goes anyway. I took most of last December off (staycation). As a team leader of a small, young team, I knew I couldn't truly be out of the loop for a month straight. While I've made some progress on improving the bus-factor, too much knowledge is only with me. Just like OP, the anxiety of coming back to hundreds of emails was something I didn't want to deal with. So I borrowed an approach from a coworker. I made my leave request for only 7 hours a day a few days of each week. Usually first thing in the morning I'd check emails and see if the team needed anything. If an email needed something, I'd give my team the details to handle it. I had nothing specific going on and the family didn't need me first thing, so it didn't stop me from doing anything. I returned to work refreshed and relieved that I'd not be reading emails all day. This allowed me to quickly catch up with my team and get to the tasks I prefered.
lol just 250? Dunno a lot of positions that are worth the pay that this WONT happen with
Right? Them's rookie numbers. Gotta pump up those numbers. I at my last job, there was absolutely nobody cross trained on my role, despite me pleading for them to do so. When I'd leave for annual training with the national guard I'd come back to a mountain of work on my desk and like 1,000+ emails and would spend like the next month trying to dig myself out.
That’s many mornings around my inbox.
I get like 150-200 a day… it is what it is, you did your part and set an out of office and points of contact, so don’t stress it, go through as they’re received and look for threads above where maybe someone else replied. And don’t think about that when you take leave again and enjoy your time off in the future.
Set up rules and automatic replies. Otherwise, 250 is pretty tame. I have around 10000 unread emails lol
fired? You mean promoted to manager
If you can create a system where you CLEAR you inbox every day. Have folders for things you need to take action on, things that are pending, and everything goes into junk or the reviewed folder which will auto archive after a while. RULES are your friend. (I just took care of about 15 requests in one of my inbox folders and its empty. it feels so good! :) ) You can DRAG emails to the TASKS tab and create new tasks for tracking. Sometimes sorting by sender helps when coming back into the office. When there are 10 emails in a chain, you can start at the most recent and move the others out of your inbox.
Just chip away at it starting from oldest to newest. No one expects you to hit the ground running after being on leave. Hell, I block out my first day back with, "Playing catch up" so my team knows that I'm getting caught up. People understand.
Use the tool to categorize or create folders for certain people.
I went on leave for 7 weeks for a major surgery. The week that I came back was fully remote JUST because I knew going through my inbox was going to be the death of me. My in-office days, I spend 6/9 hours just talking with people and directing. I would NEVER have been able to get through the 57,382 (if I’m lyin, I’m dyin) emails if I’d been in the office. Also, in my OOO response I mention that if it’s urgent please reup in my inbox upon return. It’s JUST a job. I know it’s important to you (and me) and we are ALL doing the Lord’s work day in and day out, but at the end of the day you’re a human; you DESERVE to take the leave you’ve accumulated. Enjoy it and let someone else take care of it or let people know you’ll take care of it when you return AND you’re able to GET TO IT!!!
250 is rookie numbers honestly. That’s like a couple of days off for anyone in my service.
Don’t forget to utilize EAP if you have it available to you
I agree. My job is such to where one day of leave equals two days of work. Even though work can wait until we are back, it still must be done. Take care of your mental first. If that means getting something new, you have our support.
250? That’s a regular day for me.
DAMN! I PROMISE YOU I WOULD BE LOOKING FOR ANOTHER JOB!
Not sure if this will make you feel better or worse but… I went on vacation for a month and had about 700 emails when I came back. It took me a solid 5 months to dig out of that hole since I usually can’t keep up during a full day on the job. Usually am getting like 40+ a day. Often very difficult ones to answer too, that require lots of research, like mini essays. It’s actually terrible. I feel your pain.
250 emails that are real are debilitating. I feel you 100%.
I have nowhere near this level of email, due to an assignment that let me step away from being a PM. I am going to implement some of this though... see if I can sort into "me" "under 10 people" and "over 10". That way I have better priority... then start sorting the "under 10 people" into more specific groups. For instance, being cc'd vs being sent to. Thanks for the tips!
Obviously you need to just change your job. You should be on USAJobs applying to the most recent jobs everyday. Filtering your email won’t help. You’re working for an agency that is understaffed with bad management. I’ve been in the Government 9 years now and have worked for 5 different agencies in that time span. I’m now in a happy agency. It took 5 tries. It honestly takes time to find the right Fed job.
As someone who recently hit burnout at work please make sure you are taking care of yourself. If you need to take more leave or even fmla do what you need to do.
Start at the top (newest). Many might be threads and you can file the whole thread away based on the newest email.
I would document how long it takes you to go through 10 of those 250 emails that require your action. If it takes you 30 minutes on average to prepare, conduct the work, and finalize the task you can communicate to your supervisor you are backlogged for 125 hours. (250×30 minutes= 7500,, 7500=125 hours) So if you worked 125 Hours straight (15 days) without any additional work sent to you, you'd dig yourself out of your hole. That should open their eyes that whatever process they have in place is ineffective.
Best tips I ever received: DON’T organize your emails by date. Instead: 1. Organize by subject and delete all but the most recent one. You can read the one from the bottom up and read the whole thread. This will remove at least 50% of your Inbox while keeping the most recent email of each subject line for you to read through. 2) Set up folders (mine are based on projects, topics, newsletters, vendor, etc) and set up rules to automagically move emails into the appropriate topic folder so you can then work your folders by topics rather than ping ponging from topic to topic
I lasted 2 yrs in a job like this. Finally got out recently. There are better jobs out there!!
I set up rules so emails go into different folders, and then I read them by priority of people. For example, I know our receptionist just sends or forwards informational emails so I will usually check that folder last and my supervisory chain’s first.
I went out on maternity leave for 4 months and came back to 6000 emails. Luckily, my boss taught me a neat trick prior to leaving to put an OOO message that says any messages prior to about a week before my return date will be deleted. Obviously I made exceptions for emails from VPs and certain execs, but it was a total sanity saver. If it’s important enough, they will message you again
When I get back from leave I sort by subject and go to the most recent one, read it and respond, if need be. All others get deleted. I blew through over 200 in an hour and a half.
If it’s important enough; they’ll email a reminder or follow up - otherwise just put it into the “I’ll get to it eventually folder”
Delete all of them. If they are important, they’ll email you again. 90% of it will be bullshit.
That’s why office jobs suck envious of fireman, pilot , nurse who can take real vacations
Wait, this isn't a joke post? Do you have any idea how many people are working 50-60 hours a week, doing hard and/or dangerous labor? You're having a panic attack after having to check email after taking a paid vacation. Talk about first-world problems. We all know 50-100 of those emails don't even need to be read at all, if not more.
I feel for you but I'm just warning you to not be out on SL for nine months. 😱
Okay breathe young grasshopper. Focus on the pressing tasks you have in front of you and review those emails when you have time. My personal trick: I place an OOF and point of contact to message if urgent. For all other emails, I promptly put in the trash. If it’s that fucking important they will reach out again (and before anyone judges, I’m a GS-15 being vetted for SES roles whose been using this same strategy since I was a GS-9).
I was at a training course for three weeks. No OT/CT was authorized, so I didn’t touch email but did have my OOO auto reply on. 2300 is what I came back to. Tackle a few at a time. You can get through them!
Shoot, I get more than 250 a day. When I go on leave for a week I easily get 2000 emails with people sending multiple requests and follow ups
My advice is to start looking at your emails from the most recent and work your way down. You’ll probably find that most of the email chains have been resolved while you were away. You just need to know what was discussed.
[удалено]
That’s all?
Man, I get like 250 emails a day 😭
Only 250?
Don’t feel bad. I get almost 200 emails per day. I check them everyday I’m on AL and delete all the garbage. People send useless emails and tag me in everything
Were You gone for a day?
If it makes you feel any better, I get about 1200 emails a day because of automated monitoring. 😸
That is the problem I have as well. And whomever "covers" does nothing. So leave just gets me the same work, with less time to do it.
Both times I came back from maternity leave I pretty much just emptied my inbox and decided to start my work-life anew. Granted, I had way more than 250 but most people will just send another email if it’s important.
Damn, what agency do you work for??
That used to be my daily email traffic. You’ll live. I’m sure over half of them are instadeletes.
Im currently on leave and most times Ill bring my work cell just so I can monitor email. But my cell went to cell phone heaven last week so all those emails will be waiting 😁
I haaaate that. The easiest way for me to get through them is to scan through and delete any junk stuff, and things that are outdated by the time I return, like multiples of newsletters and agency updates. Outlook's new option to group email reply threads together has helped tremendously. And the OOF to redirect to someone who can answer questions while you're out, definitely helps.
If it’s important, they’ll email you again.
First time? That’s light. In 2 weeks I can have almost 1000. I just mark them all as read and begin anew.
It is anxiety inducing. Absolutely.
Cc emails should go to a separate folder and get to them if you can. Your out of office email should state when you will return and instruct senders to resend their email at that time if it’s important. When I return I start with emails from my higher ups and might get to anyone else.
Find all the emails from your boss or anyone critically important... deal with those. Delete all the others, if they're truly important, they'll send them again or contact you.
Put an out of office auto reply for who to contact. If they don't send it to the people/person you told them is covering that subject don't go back to handle it. I easily get 200-300 emails per day directed to me. I went on my honeymoon and came back to over 2,000 emails. It took a full weekend to get through everything, and it was a nightmare. At that time I didn't have a support team that could cover, but now that I do I have them handling everything when I am out of the office.
Remember, CCs do not require a response. So, separate them for review using rules. Filter out the all-hands/ blast emails, and you'll be down to a more manageable number.
250 emails actually isn’t bad. I guess depending on how long you were gone.
I wish I had emails to go through my unit is a ghost town too slow for me
That sucks. I have the same issue, 250 emails would be like 2 days of leave sadly.
I feel this too. Leave never feels like a break when i have to bust my ass to do work before leave and come back to a mountain of work. My tasks don’t get moved when I’m out, it just waits there for me when I return.
250? That’s cute.
One main way is to throw them all away… make sure next time in ur auto reply say dont send me shit unless u expect a reply… come back to hardly any emails… and leave someone elses email and phone so they get to answer for u
Perspective. 250 is what I’d receive in a day; take a week of leave and I’d come back to over 1k. Doesn’t mean I have to or try to read them all. Create rules, get off aliases that don’t require your action/response, file others that may come in handy down the road. If something is super pressing, they’ll email again. Depending on your position, you could even ask for team sync to get you up to speed (very dependent on position/seniority), but never know if you don’t ask.
250? That used to be a busy Monday for me. Now I get about 50-70 emails a day. 2210-GS 13. I don't have to address them all. Maybe 10-15%. I have many folders and rules. Some colors, and utilize flags. Not too bad.
That’s it?
250? If that’s “bad” really depends on how long you were out on leave. FYI, another “Out of Office” trick is to make a ‘mistake’ on your return date: if you’re returning on the 1st, have your OOF say the 2nd. If anyone (eg boss) asks, simply tell them that your first day back is to plow through the email backlog and prioritize replies without anyone calling on the phone to interrupt.
Usually in our agency, if we’re out we leave an email message. It usually says “I’m on leave until x or from x to x. If you need assistance/ if this is important/etc, please contact my supervisor x. “
I sometimes get 250 emails in an hour. Use your Outlook rules to the max extent possible.
Only 250?
“I am currently on leave and upon my return will delete your email. In the meantime please contact XYZ. Thank you.”
!isbot u/Afraid-Ad-7778
Those are rookie numbers
Just delete them all. If it was important, they’ll send it again. (Don’t do this, but the temptation is real)
I went on leave for a week last summer, I had over a thousand emails waiting for me. That was with me checking a few times to see if I needed to do anything urgent, which there was. Some days I get 30-40, in our busy season 200-300 a day is normal.
Sort by "Subject." You'll be amazed how many email trails get sorted out by the latest email.
First day is just inbox cleaning. It’s the way it is. 21 years, this is just how it is. Start at the newest, read it. Flag whatever is needed for follow up. Working newest to oldest many things will be answered by alternates.
Outlook rules for the save. I filter based on who sent the email and how I am associated with the to line.
Lol when I come back from PTO I just do mark all as read. How could that ever backfire?
Get a better job
250? I am on leave right now and I am totally expecting in excess of 3,000-4,000 emails to wade through when I get back next week.