Make Your Life Easier: Emails

I decided to offer up some tips that I learned over the years to make your life easier. Periodically, I am going to write something that helped me to increase my productivity or save some time in a particular area.

Today, I am going to focus on emails. This is something that I know most people struggle with. It is rare to come across someone who does not have a full "inbox". At the time I put the following idea to use, I had almost 1,000 emails. This was an unmanageable number.

To start, it is important to understand that you will not go back and read most emails. We all think that we will "get to it later" but we never do. We tend to save a lot of useless stuff that only drains us whenever we open the email account. The following will eliminate this problem.

1. Begin by creating two new folders: label one passwords and the other with today's date.

2. Go through you inbox and move all the emails that have passwords or other similar information into the "Passwords" folder.

3. Move the remaining emails into the one with the today's date on it.

There you have it. Your inbox is suddenly empty. Now, anything new that comes in can be read and deleted. There is no effort required to try and catch up on all the old stuff. It is still there if you need it. However, you will feel better since you do not see all that old junk whenever you open your email.

What I found is that after the first month, I never went into the folder where all that old stuff is. I still have it just "in case" yet am coming to the realization that I am dreaming a bit. I will most likely never reopen 99% of what is in there. I am certain you will experience the same thing.

Now you have control of your emails. You will notice, after a short period of time, that you will be bothered if you leave even one email in the "inbox". It will get to the point where you want to handle each of them immediately and be done. This increases prodcutivity in addition to providing greater control. And, the best part is you can set this all up in under 15 minutes. It is simple but effective.
Share and Enjoy!