Kanban for Email: How to organize your inbox and up your productivity
Love Kanban? Use it for managing projects? Apply it to your email inbox! Sort out your shared inbox so that your team can spend less time on email.
Let’s face it, email can be a mess! Most people just work through a long list of incoming emails with very little strategy. Not only is this chaotic and time-consuming, but it can become especially confusing when teams are working together in a shared inbox. This is where Kanban helps to bring structure to your inbox and build a robust process around dealing with email.
What is Kanban?
Kanban originated in Japan as a system for improving manufacturing efficiency, but is now generally understood as a method for visualizing your tasks. All your to-dos are arranged as cards and separated into lists that represent the steps in your workflow. This makes it easy to monitor progress as cards move from the beginning of your workflow, right through to completion.
An example of a Kanban workflow – it’s a bit like a dynamic cork board with sticky notes
Why use Kanban with email?
Although dealing with email can be chaotic, more fancy tools aren’t always the answer. Kanban solves the problem of email with a streamlined, easy to follow process. Rather than subscribing to a product, you’re implementing a process that can transform your working habits and ensure real, lasting change.
Three ways Kanban for email will change your life
Finally organize your email inbox. No more email chaos! Kanban is a methodical process for efficiently handling email.
Do email better – as a team. Kanban’s visual layout makes it possible to collaborate with others in a shared inbox. Everyone can see the status of each email task, so it’s easy to stay on the same page.
Understand your priorities. Kanban’s clear process helps you focus on what matters most, reducing the urgency and stress of incoming emails.
Convinced? Let’s take a closer look at how to apply the Kanban methodology to your email inbox.
How to apply Kanban to your inbox
As a methodology, Kanban is simple: you move cards from list to list as they progress through your workflow. Everything else is up to you! In this sense, Trello is essentially Kanban in action: a super flexible and adaptable platform for any kind of team looking to work with the Kanban methodology.
The Email for Trello Power-Up takes advantage of that by bringing your emails into Trello so that you can leverage the power of Kanban to get more done!
1. Map out your email workflow
Firstly, it’s useful to set up lists to reflect the steps in your workflow. These will look different for every use case, but for teams working in a shared inbox these are commonly:
Inbox: New emails arrive here, just like in your normal email client. The difference now is that each email becomes a piece of work that can be moved through your pipeline as the conversation progresses.
Responded/Scheduled: This list serves as your backlog of tasks to work through. Unlike a conventional inbox, all team members can see where things stand at a glance.
In Progress: Dealing with email is a task in and of itself, but there’s plenty of work that happens around email too. If you need to discuss a response with colleagues or collaborate on to-dos to resolve an email query, here’s where you can get things done.
Awaiting Feedback: Free up headspace while you’re waiting for input from a colleague or feedback from a customer.
Done: Everybody’s favorite list in Trello! Enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done before moving back to your inbox list to start on something new.
An example email workflow in Trello. Copy our Trello template to get started!
2. Share the email workload
The Kanban approach brings your workflow to life visually. This is invaluable for transparency and efficiency. Everyone can see what’s in each list so that:
You’re not doubling up on work. With the Kanban layout, it’s easy for team members to see what’s on the go and make sure they’re not working on the same thing at the same time.
Work is more efficient. Kanban eliminates wasted time by limiting your work in progress items. The visual format of cards in lists makes it easy to spot backlogs and bottlenecks, so they can be cleared before becoming a problem.
It’s easy to keep track of work. In a traditional inbox, emails pile up into a long list, meaning email can often fall through the cracks, leading to problems and delays further down the line. If you’re using Kanban to organize your inbox, each email is visualized as a card and treated as a separate piece of work, so it’s obvious if some to-dos are being overlooked.
3. Prioritize your emails
Email can often feel like a hurried and overwhelming race towards inbox zero. Instead of treating everything as urgent, the Kanban methodology encourages clear prioritization and reduces stress. It achieves this in a few ways:
Work is visible. Each list acts as a queue of work, starting with the highest priority task. Everyone on the team can view the list at a glance, so that there’s clarity on the division of work and individual responsibilities.
The process is clear. All too often, inboxes are organized by simply ‘read’ and ‘unread’ leading to a long, confusing stream of emails with no clear structure. Kanban adds distinct steps to your process so that you can develop your own unique email workflow – giving you and your team a much clearer picture of where work is at.
It’s about “pull” not “push”. Instead of a mad scramble to get all hands on deck when emails are pouring in, team members can actively take responsibility for getting things done. It’s as simple as pulling email tasks from the top of the list. With everyone on the same page, team effort is agile and self-directed, meaning more productive time and less stress!
Why use Trello?
We’re big fans of Trello because it is built on the Kanban methodology. So rather than retrofitting Kanban into your existing email provider, the Email for Trello Power-Up brings all the functionality of email into Trello itself. This way, your team gets the benefit of Trello as a project management platform as well as the ability to manage your shared inbox with Kanban. It’s a win-win!
Organize your inbox with Kanban
If you’re looking to bring order to an unruly inbox, Kanban is here to help. There’s a reason it works so well for software teams! By viewing email communication as a process – and facilitating that process – Kanban helps your team respond to emails strategically instead of reactively, restoring a sense of calm and purpose to your inbox.
Instead of treating email as an individual pursuit, the Kanban structure creates a shared workflow that the whole team can participate in. With clear steps to follow, Kanban reduces mess and stress – making it much easier to share the workload, save team time and increase productivity when it comes to dealing with email.