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Don't Let Email Rule Your Life

Guest post by: Terri Levine

Article Overview: Email is one of those unnecessary evils of modern life - whether at home or at work, it is a major form of communication that infiltrates most of our waking hours. Here are some tips for taming it and keeping it under control.

Don't Let Email Rule Your Life

It is unlikely that the clock will be turned back to the 1940's or 1950's when life had a slower pace, mum was home all day, everyone had time to fit everything in to their day. In today's hectic, fast-paced environment, time has become precious - we never have enough of it.

The majority of us work in some capacity, we have families and careers or businesses to juggle, everyone wants a piece of us and we end up on the bottom of our own priority list. And one of the worse time stealing culprits in our busy lives is our email.

So here are a few tips to help you rule your email instead of it ruling you:

1. Don't leave your email program open. Shut it down and just open it at designated times of the day when you have decided you will check and respond to your emails. Once in the morning, midday, and last thing before you finish is sufficient. Tell people if contacting you is urgent, use the phone. The only time you need to keep your email program open is when you are expecting an urgent email.

2. Use email rules to manage your inbox. You can sort your emails into "must read now" (and leave them in your inbox) and those you can read later. Let your email program then sort your emails for you as it comes in - you don't have to do it. You just need to name new folders where the emails will be stored. For example, have folders for each of your clients, your newsletters, friends, specific projects, emails just cc'd into you for info, etc. Set up filters and rules so that each email will automatically be filed in those folders and you can look at them when you have time.

3. When you check your email then, the only emails that should be left are those that don't fall into one of the above categories, most of which should be emails you need to attend to in a more immediate time frame. Run your eye down them, delete the rubbish that missed the spam filter and flag those that are more urgent than the rest so they stand out in the list and you know which ones you need to attend to first.

4. Use the Reminder function. Don't rely on your memory to keep track. Set a reminder on each individual email you need to do work with, to remind you either hourly, daily, weekly or even monthly. The good thing about this reminder function is like an alarm clock, it has a snooze feature - you can delay the function for as many times as you need until you have completed the task and then you can dismiss/delete it.

5. If your work is such that keeping pending emails in your inbox is not workable, use another folder to store them in - Pending folder.

6. Arrange your client folders so all the emails are not stored in just the one folder. Think of it as a virtual email filing cabinet. Of course you can keep all client emails just in one folder but it is easier to find information if you have sub-folders under their name with relevant emails stored in each.

7. If you subscribed to sites who are now spamming you or you don't have time to read what they send, follow the unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of their emails and remove yourself from their lists. When an email comes in form a particular sender you don't want to hear from, use the Rules and filter those emails to go direct into the Delete folder.

Coupled with a good spam filter and a little self discipline and organization on your part, your email should no longer rule your life.

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Article Tags: email, handling email, time management



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