Email! What would we do without this incredible and wonderful form of communication?
But, there’s a dark side to email which threatens to dampen your productivity. Email can also be incredibly time consuming and absorbs your time like an insatiable sponge because it distracts you from the work that needs to be done.
Every time a new email notification nabs your immediate attention, the more time it takes to get back to the project at hand. It’s easy to let your email intake dictate your work day, but its time to take charge and put email in its place.
There are several ways you manage your email more effectively, so here is how you can conquer email mountain more effectively, and take back your work day.
- Lose the Junk Mail – It’s all very well to subscribe to industry newsletters and other journals. But, do you really read them or find them useful? They pop up every other week and continually pile up in your email box. If you don’t use them or read them, then stop wasting time deleting them and UNSUBSCRIBE them. Think about how time you waste deleting junk mail, because the time you waste is scary.
- Focus on Your Work – Not Your Email – Yes, your email is important, but whenever you take time when a email notification pops up, you let your work slide because you have to recover to get your mind in the game again. Turn the email notifications off and select specific times of the day to handle the email such as after coffee breaks and lunch hour. Your day will be much more productive!
- Use Email Search – Many email providers provide specific search terms to find important email more efficiently such as “has attachment” and other forms of search terms. You can use this feature to find what you need more quickly.
- Organize Your Archive – Organize your emails according to subject and set up folders where you can archive your most important reference emails. This way you find those important emails faster rather than scrolling and becoming frustrated when you can’t find it.
- Delete! Delete! Delete! – If you don’t have any use for your archived email anymore, you should review your archive folders every so often and delete the email which is no longer relevant.
Say Goodbye to Email Mountain, and say Hello to a clean Inbox.
