If you’re like me, you have too many e-mails to keep your inbox empty as your physical mailbox. The # of e-mails I receive daily has quadrupled since July. I’m now managing 100+ e-mails on weekdays! Even at the minimum of 15 seconds to read/respond/delete as appropriate per e-mail this would take 25 minutes a day. Obviously some will take less, but many will take several minutes to respond to. This is becoming more and more of a chore each day. Here are a few things to try to help manage those overflowing inboxes.
1- I know you’ve read this one already, but it’s very important – Have a separate account for misc. registrations or pay to read e-mails that send many a day. I have a “junk” type account for some of these registrations that I only check once or twice a week. If I get behind on my pay to read e-mails I just delete them with no worries. If you sign up for something that you want to address regularly then have it sent to your personal account.
2- Use the delete button while the e-mail is open. I used to always go back to my inbox, forcing me to check the boxes for each e-mail to delete later (3 clicks). By clicking delete while the e-mail is still open, it will delete and go back to the inbox with one click instead of 3. *Your e-mail may be set up to automatically open the next message when you delete which can save time also. I have turned this feature off because I don’t always promptly read what gets opened.
3- Use the search feature when you’re looking for something. I currently have 1200+ e-mails in my main inbox. If I’m looking for a recipe or address someone sent me etc. it is super quick to search for it instead of trying to scroll down to when you think it was sent. You can search for the sender or a keyword. You can also sort by sender, subject or date (default).
4- If you have a blog and want to remain anonymous set up a separate e-mail account (with your blog name as the name that’s registered) for the blog and have it forwarded to your personal e-mail. This keeps your business e-mail coming to you instantaneously without having to log in and out and check a separate account. Occasionally I do need to sign into my business account to reply to a message, but I prefer every few days to every hour. When I do log in I can usually click “select all” and delete almost the entire box because I’ve already tended to them from my personal e-mail.
*update- TTP has grown by leaps and bounds and with well over 2500 readers I can’t keep up with work related e-mails coming to my personal inbox. I’ve had to turn the forward feature off and use my work e-mail much more frequently than my personal e-mail. It was a great thing while it lasted though!
5- Send e-mails to yourself. This may seem silly, but it is much easier to search for a message with a search tool than to hunt for the scrap of paper you wrote it on, or flip through a spiral notebook. This also puts the message at your fingertips from anywhere you are. You can do the same with documents such as rosters with contact info. I also love that these messages aren’t taking up room in my already small house!
6- If you aren’t able to take care of a message before you leave it, flag or star it for follow up. It is very easy to overlook an e-mail that has been opened. The flag will remind you not to delete it without finishing up whatever business it requires of you.
7- If you e-mail a real person (not a company) be sure to click to add them to your address book. Even if you don’t think you’ll e-mail them often it will save you from searching for their address later.
8- Label Spam. It’s tempting to just delete spam, but do take the time to mark it as spam. This allows your e-mail filters to catch any message that is a very similar message or from the same sender and send it to spam for you the next time.
My goal for my personal inbox is to have less than 500 messages archived in it by March. I think I’d rather clean toilets!
Any other ideas folks? Please add a comment to pass them along!
Speak Your Mind