How much email do you receive in a day? According to a study performed by the Radacti Group, the average businessperson receives 61 legitimate emails daily. You need to have a way to organize it, else you will be buried under a virtual mountain of mail by the end of the week. Here are ten tips which will help you keep your Inbox organized.
Do you need the jokes, mailing lists and reminders of meetings from three months ago? Paring the mail will help your mail server to run more efficiently and allow you to get a better handle on your in box.
Filter your messages by adding rules to your inbox. Rules will let you sort your email into folders based on the sender’s address. You can do nearly anything with rules, including deleting messages and declaring them spam. You can immediately place the unessential email aside, drawing more attention to the important messages.
If you hate throwing it away, ask yourself if you need to have immediate access to ALL of your email. Take the time to archive your email. This will put your email out of sight. If you are able to go without those messages for three months, erase them.
You have probably grown familiar with the use of tags for easily categorizing your blog posts and pages. You can also put tags on your email so it is easily found. If you’re using Outlook, Taglocity is an excellent program for tagging your email.
Every email program has the option of using folders. By putting your email into folders, you can easily keep track of the categories of your email. This will save you time because you can sort through the subjects of your folders rather than each individual message.
Create subject lines which clearly identify the subject of the email. Having messages titled ‘stuff’ or ‘important’ are nearly useless when you are trying to find them again. The person who is receiving your email will be thankful because they can immediately judge the priority of your email.
Take fifteen minutes at the end of the week to organize and erase your email. Start the next week with a free in box, clear of spam and clutter. There is a satisfaction associated with deleting spam and simplification.
You might no longer be interested in basket weaving, but you still receive two emails a day on the subject. There might have been some free brochure that you were offered for signing up to a daily newsletter. Take the time to free up some space in your inbox by unsubscribing from unused mailing lists and irrelevant newsletters.
Your email is not your to-do list. If there are actionable items within your email list, put them on your calendar or your to-do list. When you are receiving a hundred emails a day, important tasks can be quickly buried. Move your messages into a folder, onto the to-do list or onto a calendar as soon as you receive them.
Your email arrives from numerous sources. You can easily organize the newsletters, the jokes and the meeting reminders. Remember to take action on your email as soon as it is received and you will be an email pro in no time.
This guest post was written by Tom Walker who designs and blogs for a supplier of OfficeJet inks, toners and paper. You can read more of his work on the topics of print media, advertising and the arts on their blog.