Get a Grip on Email Overload

Is it just me, or is the monsoon of email rising like the earth’s oceans, ready to swamp you entirely if you don’t keep up every day? Give one political contribution and suddenly, every pol is your friend; join a professional organization and every related provider wants your business; and are there more and more nice Russian ladies wanting to meet you?

Besides driving you crazy, this deluge can cause you to miss the relatively small amount of important stuff in your mailbox that you need to know and act upon.  So what can you do to manage it all?

Manage that Email Monsoon

1) Arrange to get fewer emails.

• Make sure your email program blocks spam (as well as possible)
• Unsubscribe to newsletters you don’t need
• Filter messages into folders (newsletters, sales, political messages and other stuff that you don’t want to see when it comes in, but can view when you’re ready)

2) Make your email interruptions less frequent

• Adjust your settings to check for email every ½ hour or hour rather than every minute – you can check manually when you’re expecting something urgent
• Or, turn your email program off altogether when you need to concentrate. (Make sure your essential contacts know how to reach you another way when it’s urgent.)

3) Get emails out of your main inbox as quickly as possible

• Delete unneeded emails
• Answer easy emails quickly
• Create a “HOLDER” folder for emails you’ve answered, but that you’re not yet ready to delete because you may need to refer to them again
• Try to keep your inbox down to no more emails than can be viewed on one computer screen

4) Consider further steps:

• Create multiple accounts and give your “most important” email address to only a select few. When you want to focus, you can have your computer display only those incoming messages.
• Declare “Email Bankruptcy” if you’re hopelessly under water. If you’re afraid to delete it all, move them all to a BANKRUPTCY folder that you can access and search with names or key words if you need to.

For the past few weeks I’ve been trying out a free trail of a service called SaneBox, which studies your email habits and diverts most incoming messages (messages it thinks are not urgent) to a folder called SaneLater.  Then once a day, or however often you want it to, it sends you an email that lists and gives you access to all the emails it has diverted to that folder. You can, of course, check that SaneLater box as often as you want.  I’m actually amazed at how much of what I don’t need to know urgently, I don’t need to know at all!  It really helps.

Stopping the constant tide of email is so important if you want to get work done and to use your brain creatively.  Interruptions really interfere with your mind’s ability to integrate material. Multitasking severely dumbs down your brain.

Make your computer your helper and not your heckler.

What tips would you like to add?