What Are the Right Buckets For Email And Does It Really Matter?

 From watching this YouTube video, BEST Way to Organize Gmail, it would be easy to believe the author’s argument that email generally falls into three categories: Follow-up; Awaiting response; Need to read.

Perhaps they do, but you could just as well organize them by:

• Sender or source, such as: Client; Team; Project
• Timeframe, such as: Today; This week; This month
• Status or stage, such as: To Do; In Progress; Done

 While dividing emails into buckets can be helpful for managing your workload and staying organized, it's important to recognize that simply creating buckets is not a substitute for taking real action on your emails. In other words, creating the right buckets is just the first step towards being productive with your email.

In all the examples above, the buckets or folders are based on a factor other than the urgency and importance of the task it represents. Dividing emails into the categories...