Organize Your Email Inbox and Reduce Clutter - Stop Being a Slave to Your Email

Email has become the most important communication tool for most people, but this wonderful tool may also be a curse if not kept under control. The constant influx messages can at times be overwhelming and leave one dazed and confused. How many times have you opening your email and suddenly felt that handling all your emails has become a herculean task. What follows is my list of actions that will make your life with email much easier.

Turn off any email notification that you have gotten a new email. You email account is not the boss of you, you are the boss. You should not be disturbed when you are working on something else, instead pick several times during the day to check your email account and take care of your emails at that time. Doing this will save you time and even reduce stress.

Create an inbox that collects emails that are addressed only to you. This will be your most important inbox. You do this by creating a rule that sends messages addressed only to you to this special inbox, I use "my eyes only" for this. Now messages stored in your original inbox are addressed to multiple people and are usually not as important to you.

Over the years we all get on email lists for various companies or people that want to sell you something. If you don't need it, unsubscribe from it, usually there is an unsubscribe option at the bottom of the email. If there is no unsubscribe option or unsubscribing doesn't work then create a rule to send email from that addressee to the trash.

If you have a friend that likes to send you emails containing jokes or whatever that have been emailed to lots of people, delete it and ask your friend to stop sending you those types of emails. Those emails are often used for transmitting viruses. If you get emails from the ex-queen of Nigeria that will pay you millions to help her move her money into the US, delete it. Beware or email scams, there are lots of them.

Now you need to deal with the emails that you get. You want to do one of five things after you read an email; trash it, reply then trash it, put it on your calendar then trash it, create a task then trash it, put it in a folder , or trash it. I said trash it a lot because to kept things from building up you need to take care of it right away and get rid of it, if possible. You may have a few long term projects going on where you will need to save the email for future reference but if it requires you to do something make sure you create a task also.

If you use outlook you can create tasks easily by dragging the email to the task icon this will create a task from the email. You can also drag an email to the calendar icon to create a reminder from the email or a meeting.

There were times when I had more than 400 emails in my inbox and I decided I had to do something. This is how I decided to tame my email, I hope it works for you also and if you have other methods to deal with the mayhem then please share them. I recommend you spend your new found free time watching a new DVD.

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