Browse email folders or search – which is faster?
Datum: 2026-06-02 08:28
All the emails you need to keep — how should you save them? Should you create a folder structure in your email app, or should you put all emails in one pile and then search for what you need?
Opinions differ, including among participants in my lectures and courses. When I bring up how we should best handle the constant stream of emails most of us wade through daily, views always diverge on exactly where to store them.
For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the ""Done!"" podcast:
What matters varies
Of course, it depends — as always. For some, it’s most important to be able to see all incoming emails of a certain kind (from a specific client, about a specific project, and similar) together, and that affects the choice. But for most people, what matters most is how quickly they can find an email.
Large volumes of emails measured
A study from IBM Research provides guidance. The researchers studied how 345 participants located a total of 85,000 emails over a two-month period. They noted how the participants searched and measured how long it took them to find the right email (and whether they found it at all).
It turned out that those who clicked their way through folders found the right email in an average of 1 minute, while those who searched instead found it in an average of 15 seconds.
So if you want to find emails quickly, you should search.
Do this
If you usually browse through folders to find the email you’re looking for, try searching more from now on.
If you feel that search doesn’t work and you still can’t find the right message, you may need to refine how you search. I’ve written on the Structure Blog about how to do this in Outlook, and I’ve also found a good guide for those who use Gmail and one for those who use Mail in macOS.
Faster than browsing
If you search for your emails instead of clicking through a folder structure to reach them, you’ll find what you’re looking for faster, according to the study mentioned. If you still want to create a folder structure in your email for an overview of what you have, that’s perfectly fine, but you don’t need to put emails into folders to find them quickly.
How do you do it?
Do you have a favorite search term that you use often? Do you search for a specific keyword, by sender, by whether the email contains an attachment, or some other smart combination? Write to me and tell me, I’m curious!
(Speaking of emails- Do you think about writing clear subject lines in your emails?)
There is more!
If you want more tips on how to create good structure at work, there are many ways to get that from me - in podcasts, videos, books, talks and other formats.
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