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Control your Email

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If you've ever had an email account, chances are you've had email overload. In the beginning, email was fun. You couldn't wait to check your account and see what neat things you could do next. Then after a while, like your new cell phone, the novelty wore off. You can deal with that email tomorrow.

Now months or years later you're finding yourself in email overload. There are 14,382 emails in your inbox waiting to be sorted, read, and deleted, and you haven't a clue where to start. Email doesn't have to be a nightmare! Learn how to clean up the clutter and make your inbox work for you.

Photo courtesy of Creative Commons and ktommy.

If you haven't already, try Gmail.

I've had Hotmail and Yahoo! accounts, and have used Outlook Express and Thunderbird. If find Gmail superior to all of them, plus if you have a domain name you can manage your email through Gmail's system!

Create a clean inbox in five simple steps per day

No one has time to sit down and spend an afternoon clearing out their inbox. Tackle the mess with five simple steps per day:

Process today's mail.
Process means open and read, then delete, act upon, forward, reply to, or file as necessary. Do something constructive with it. This helps you avoid adding to the mess, so every day you're at LEAST maintaining status quo.
Pick one other day and process that mail.
For a while, you're going to be pulling double duty. Pick one other day (yesterday, last month, last year) that you still have mail in your inbox for, and process it. This helps you get rid of old mail without spending too much time on it or getting overwhelmed. Today plus one.
Add one filter that helps you recognize important email.
Even if it just means adding a "personal" tag to incoming mail from your kids, spend 15 seconds to create one filter for incoming mail that you don't want to get stuck unread.
Add one filter that automatically deletes something you don't want.
Better yet, get off their mailing list.
Act on one item you've been procrastinating on.
Read a week's worth of newsletters, reply to a long email, whatever. Get it out of your inbox.

Color-code your labels

Keep like labels together by using the same color label and different keywords, such as shopping-buy, shopping-ordered, shopping-print.

What kind of filters can you create?

shopping, for all those incoming sales circulars from eBay, Amazon, etc.
reading, for incoming newsletters and daily tips. Try to-read, writingnewsletters, Squidoo, or library.
action items, or things to do. Label them with the month, priority level, or simply "to-do."