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For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the ""Done!"" podcast:

Is it bet­ter to use folders?

But what’s great about hav­ing clas­sic fold­ers in your email inbox is that you can access all the emails in a spe­cif­ic fold­er with one click. If you were to achieve the same selec­tion through a search, the search would like­ly have to be quite pre­cise and advanced.

The one who search­es, search­es again

What you search for once, you will like­ly have to search for again. Per­haps you often need to see all emails of a par­tic­u­lar type quick­ly. It becomes a bit cum­ber­some if you have to do the same search every time. And isn’t it tedious to have to write the same search terms repeatedly?

That’s why it’s great to save pre-set search­es that you can use again. Out­look has this fea­ture, just like Mail for macOS. Gmail does­n’t have it (except for fil­ters, which work as rules instead), but one option is to save the search as a brows­er book­mark instead.

Do this

If you often search for the same type of emails and want to make it as easy as pos­si­ble, look at your email app’s saved search feature.

In Out­look, it’s called ​“Search Fold­ers” and in Mail for macOS it’s called ​“Smart Mail­box­es”.

Come up with a new search to save. It could be find­ing all emails from three select­ed senders, all emails with a spe­cif­ic word in the mes­sage text, all emails with a par­tic­u­lar phrase in the sub­ject line and an attach­ment, or some­thing similar.

Save the fil­ter, search fold­er, or smart mail­box and test it. See how quick­ly you can find what you used to search for!

Found faster — less time wasted

If you use saved search­es in your email, you’ll quick­ly find the col­lec­tion of emails you want to see — with­out sort­ing them into sep­a­rate fold­ers. It’s quick to save emails you want to keep and you can quick­ly find what you need. That’s how it should be, right?

How do you do it?

Do you use the ​“saved search” fea­ture for your emails? What type of emails do you use it for? Please let me know, as I want to get inspi­ra­tion for refin­ing my own struc­ture even more! 

(Do you rec­og­nize being part of an email con­ver­sa­tion with mul­ti­ple peo­ple involved, where you even­tu­al­ly don’t need to be includ­ed? Here´s how to get rid of irrel­e­vant con­ver­sa­tion threads!)