Blog Home

If you take pride in your excessive neatness, think again. There is a good chance you have OCOD (Obsessive Compulsive Organization Disorder)! But wait. No need to run to the doctor yet. Almost all of us display OCOD when it comes to email, by organizing our email into folders.

So why is organizing our messages into folders so important to us? Most often it is simply an attempt to get a handle on email volume overload. We fear the probability of losing important messages in clutter and not being able to locate them quickly when needed.

Folders give us a sense of security. We believe that sorting our email away into these smaller piles give us some amount of control over locating a message in a hurry.

Another reason we use folders is because of the disorganized and chaotic feeling that a cluttered inbox provides. Pushing the offending flood of email out of sight and into folders feels almost therapeutic and provides an illusionary high of being efficient and productive with our email.

But did you know that folders may not be the best way to organize your email? Keep watching this space and next week we’ll tell you why.

Do you use folders to organize your email? Let us know in the comments below.