7 Tips for Managing Emails

We can no more afford to spend major time on minor things than we can to spend minor time on major things.  ~ Jim Rohn

With computers being a daily part of most of our lives, our email inboxes can really overflow and overwhelm!   Managing your email is an important part of the workday.  Here are my top 7 tips for managing email.

1. Manage What Comes In.  The most important thing you can do to manage your email, is manage what comes into your inbox.   Be sure to subscribe only to email from companies you care to receive news from.    This can greatly reduce the amount of email that comes in to you, and eliminate the stress of lost or forgotten emails

2. Read It and Answer It.  Don’t read all your emails at once then go back and answer them.   This will possibly delay a response or cause you to forget about an email.  Read and respond immediately, delete or file the email.

3. Use Filters and Create Folders.   Use filtering to help you automate the sorting process.  You can set up filter rules that will send emails from certain email addresses into designated folders.  For example, you could set up a folder for newsletters to be read later or set up a filter for emails from your boss.

4. Add a Hierarchy to Your Folder System.  Use an asterisk (*) in front of each label for most used folders and “Z” for those less used.

5. Start Fresh Today.  Create an email folder called “OLD” and move all your inbox emails into that folder.   This will allow you to start fresh with an uncluttered inbox.

6.  Deactivate the Automatic Email Notification.  Responding to each and every email can break your concentration.  Try to focus on the task at hand.  If possible, set designated times to check and respond to email throughout the day.

7.  Unsubscribe Often.  Use the unsubscribe feature to free yourself of emails you no longer wish to receive.

What is your favorite email management tip?  Please share in the comments section.